


with terror half wild

by Accidental_Ducky



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Melissa McCall, Eichen | Echo House, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Haunted Houses, M/M, Multiple Character Death(s), Rose Red AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:09:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 51,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28510953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Accidental_Ducky/pseuds/Accidental_Ducky
Summary: "You punched a ghost in the face?" Derek looks to Stiles, gesturing wildly at where Melissa is standing. "Can we adopt her, too?""Maybe after we get out of here, babe." Stiles rests his hand on Derek's shoulder and they give each other puppy dog eyes. Normally Melissa would be cooing and squealing with joy, but there's the matter of them being trapped in a fucking murder house, so the joy will have to wait until later. She clears her throat pointedly and the love-sick idiots drop back into the present."Did you get a good look at her face?""No, I was too concerned with knocking her out before she could tear out my throat," Melissa says dryly.
Relationships: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Jennifer Blake/Derek Hale, Liam Dunbar & Stiles Stilinski
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	1. Real Love is Silent

" _The town kept its secrets, and the Marsten House brooded over it like a ruined king."_

—' **Salem's Lot, Stephen King**

Warm sunshine fills the house, throwing colored shadows over an attic floor that's become warped and beaten by time. There are fine cracks in the rose-hued bricks making up the walls, dark gaps like missing teeth where the mortar had once been a thick, white line. The space is cramped, filled with forgotten furnishings that have gathered dust across the surfaces so thick that it looks like snow.

Across the room, through an arched doorway made of rough timber, a set of stairs twist and wind their way crookedly to a tower not seen on any blueprint. Footprints, barely visible, follow the jagged curve of the staircase into the tower, a small room in desperate need of renovations. Spread across the floor is a checkered blanket with moth-eaten edges and on top of the blanket are two women that look to be in the prime of their lives. Of course, that would imply that air filled their lungs, heart pumped out a rich flow of red through delicate veins.

Corinne and Marin have been dead for going on fifty-two years now.

They don't feel the warm sunshine anymore than they can feel the dampness of the room. The only thing they feel is a pulsing hunger low in their bellies; something warmer and sharper than arousal, something that screams for fresh blood and the smell of sawdust. For now, though, they satiate what they can—sending out spirits with foreboding in the crooks of their fingers and dreadful promises dripping off sharp tongues like poison.

"We will have such fun," Corinne whispers, leaning heavily against Marin's side. "Think of how long we could power our house with the boy." Marin hums, brushing soft strands of hair off her lover's face. The sunlight traces patterns over Corinne's sharp cheeks, throws red across her eyes and deep green over the white collar or her dress.

"The psychics will be here soon enough," Marin says. "After that, we just have to worry about keeping them here." They lapse into a comfortable silence, Corinne shifting to rest her head on Marin's lap, her brown eyes closing with a flutter of lashes. They flash darkly in the light, sharp edged like the blade of some fierce hunter.

"Once we have my great grandson here, we can _build_."

Melissa is sitting alone in her bedroom, the sunlight flooding in and filling her home with a warmth that's been missing lately. Her son has officially moved into a college dorm, taking all his clutter and lacrosse gear with him. Part of Melissa misses the clutter because that meant her baby was home, but now she has the chance to start over with her own creative touch without a son or a husband to complain about doilies.

Once she gets the five thousand dollars promised to her she'll head to Hobby Lobby and pick out some decorations to lend color to the beige walls. She can also afford a dog if she picks one that'll stay small. A pug? Definitely not a chihuahua, though. Those little turds are mean.

She's just about to slip off into a nice dream when she realizes it's not a dream at all. That her finger is working against her comforter in neat cursive to spell out the words _you're expected_. She can see the wavering shape of a smile, a glint of malice in brown eyes. It's all things she's seen before, images as words twisting around in her head until she has to fight to get jolts backward and smacks her head against the wall, pain shooting down her neck and between her shoulder blades.

"Son of a bitch," she hisses, rolling her shoulders to help ease the pain. The visions have gotten worse since agreeing to be part of the Echo House expedition, they cling to her like a second skin and those two words are always swimming in front of her eyes until she just _has_ to write them down or she'll go crazy.

Melissa tries to relax again, to enjoy the first rays of summer sun, but her fingers are twitching in her lap like they've got wires attached to them. They ache to trace those damn words and she curses her ability. She never asked to be psychic, but here she is. She's pretty sure this is God's idea of a practical joke.

She gets off the bed with a sharp sigh, heading straight to the kitchen. There's no better way to ignore psychic bologna than by baking. Her kitchen isn't large, but it's cozy and sunlight warms the space, rays of it reflecting an array of colors over the floor as it passes through the stained glass mobile hanging up over the stove. She doesn't know it yet, but she's going to hate stained glass in just a few days, the sight of it will be enough to make her sick. For now, though, it makes her think of Allison and the way her bright smile warms Scott's heart.

There's a couple of shelves built into one wall of the kitchen, holding an array of binders with handwritten recipes inside them. None are the originals that her abuela had passed down to her (those were safe in her deposit box), but these are just as special. Allison had spent an entire afternoon carefully writing out each recipe on purple pages that smell of lavender.

Melissa smiles, pulling one of her binders down from the cabinet. This one is bright red, the front of it covered in a collage or pink and purple hearts with a couple of pies thrown in for good measure. Scott had worked hard on getting this binder just right, the recipes inside a mish-mash of the McCall family's and the Delgados. Melissa had grinned when he gave it to her last Valentine's Day.

"They're going to live happy lives," she says to the universe at large. "They're going to have a beautiful little boy and he'll grow up to be the perfect balance to their goofiness. A line to their kite." She knows this is true, she's seen the boy's rich brown hair and lively blue eyes, his round cheeks and somber smile. They're going to be happy.

 _You might not be_ , a voice whispers as Melissa flips through the pages. _You might not live past Memorial Day_. She shakes her head as if to dislodge the voice, but it's as useless as arguing with Rafael. She knows there's a good chance this trip will kill her, but, dammit, she's going to do something with her life before it's over.

"An apple pie," she decides, moving around to gather the needed ingredients. "That'll be a nice surprise when the kids come here for Memorial Day. A fresh apple pie and homemade vanilla ice cream." She nods and sets to work, determinedly ignoring the way her fingers twitch as she sprinkles flour over her table to work the dough in. She isn't going to think about that sharp-as-glass smile or those two words that keep echoing in her mind, a broken record that scratches over and over again.

 _You're expected_.

Jennifer's in her office when Derek comes in, his shoes scuffing against old tiles until he drops into the chair across from her desk. He's got an easy smile in place, though she can tell by one look that he's tired after working all day.

"Hard day," he asks, making it sound casual as he slouches.

"Not too bad, I suppose," Jennifer says. "Argent had a reporter sneak into my class and ask me questions about the Echo House trip." She shrugs and tries to make herself sound just as casual as Derek, but she falls short of the mark. Jennifer isn't a casual person, she's a coiled spring of anger, resentment, and anxiety.

"Want me to hunt Argent down and bury him somewhere? I could, you know."

"Oh, believe me, I know. I also know that I'm too tired to bail my boyfriend out of jail."

"Whatever you say."

"What about you? How was your day?" Derek scrubs his hands over his face as if he can rub away the past twenty-six years' of worry and stress. She knows he'd had a tough up-bringing, an absentee dad and a drunken mother, but some days are worse than others.

"I signed the contract today." The words are muffled against his palms, barely making it past his fingers and to her ears. She glances over to the pictures set out on her desk; both black and white, one a large house and the other the house's original owners. Jennifer's gaze lingers on the woman's face, tracing the silhouette a dress forms, the dark hair pinned up beneath a hat and the smile that's become so familiar. Corinne Hale.

"I can't believe you're actually going through with this," she murmurs. Jennifer doesn't look at Derek, he's not nearly as interesting as the woman in the photograph.

"It's the best decision anyone in my family has ever made. Echo House will be torn down come July." She thinks of that grand house with the brick walls and iron fence, all of it crumbling away under the force of a wrecking ball and some guy making less than minimum wage. It makes her want to throttle Derek sometimes. "You have that look in your eye again."

"What look?" She does meet his gaze now, the same dark green as his mother's. His face is open and earnest, but shadows gather to form sharp angles that make him look monstrous. Those cheekbones, the curl of his lips, it's all Corinne and Jennifer remembers once again why she needs this relationship to last just a few days longer.

"The look you get whenever you hear about Echo House. Kind of manic." She fights the urge to glance at the pictures again. "Have you talked to that one guy yet? The brother of the kid you want so badly?"

"I did. He says he can get Liam to the house in exchange for twelve thousand bucks." Jennifer taps a nail against her desk, trying to ignore the shock blooming in Derek's eyes. She knows it's a lot, _she knows_ , but it's worth it. "Do you know how powerful this little boy is, Derek?"

"Must be something special for that amount."

"The other people in the group are candles, but Liam Stilinski is a searchlight. If anyone can wake up Echo House, it's him." Derek lets out a sharp hiss of air between clenched teeth, shaking his head hard enough that wisps of brown hair sway over his forehead.

"How many times do I have to remind you that waking the house up is downright crazy? You've read the history yourself, it's basically a fucking death trap." She has read the history, she's memorized it and sometimes recites it in her head to help her fall asleep. Decapitation, murder, disappearances, all things that have happened on that property over the years. "If you wake up Echo House, then you're signing a death warrant for everyone in the group."

"They know the risks." Her voice is cold and hard, ice on asphalt just waiting on a car to hit it and veer off into a snowbank. "I'm going to get my proof and not one person is going to stop me.

The room Liam sees when he closes his eyes is full of reflected light, casting strange shadows over shelves full of books and a hearth with dancing flames. There are no windows in this room and no people to be seen, but it's _full_. There's a heavy presence draping around him like a blanket, smothering him until he's fighting to get free.

The glass floor beneath his feet turns liquid, cold and thick around his thighs as he fights desperately to find a way out. He knows there's a door nearby, but the room is so big and he's so little that he doesn't think he'll ever feel the cold brass knob beneath his palm.

"Help," he shouts, sobbing now. "Help me! Stiles!" His own voice echoes back at him, doubling and tripling until it's all nonsense. It's all just noise that disorients him more than he already is. "Stiles!" If he can find the door, then he'll be safe, just find the door. _Find the door and Stiles will be waiting_.

"Liam." The noise cuts out and the sudden silence of the room makes his ears ring. He gazes around, his pulse a staccato beat in his ears. The firelight has softened, the chandelier overhead flickering on with the faint hum of electricity along old wires. "There you are. I've been looking all over for you."

Liam doesn't say anything, crouching down to make himself smaller. The glass is still liquid, cold against the underside of his chin. A woman in white steps out of the deep shadows near the fireplace, gliding over the floor so smoothly that he doesn't think she's actually touching it. Her dark hair falls over her shoulders, the strands reflecting the oranges and burnt reds of the fire.

"Come on out of hiding, young man," she calls. The woman stops in the middle of the room, her reflection monstrous in the rippling glass of the floor. Overhead, the glass ceiling is showing a dark thing, warped beyond anything his imagination could create, twisted and stunted with leathery skin like a bat. "Liam!"

 _No_ , Liam thinks, ducking farther down until the liquid glass brushes his ears. The woman's voice is sweet as spun sugar, but there's something hard hidden behind it, velvet wrapped around cold steel. Eyes brown as graveyard dirt search the room, the endless barrage of orange and red and black until they suddenly fix on where he's trying so hard to hide. Her lips crook up in a sharp smile, baring teeth that are far too long for a human mouth.

"There you are, young man. You're expected."

Liam heaves himself upright, breathing hard and disoriented. He looks around, finding the cramped space of his bedroom rather than some spooky, old library. There are no monsters here.

Something shifts in the bed beside him and he chokes on his scream, nerves wound up so tightly that he's surprised when they don't snap apart and leave him raw. He thinks the only reason that hasn't happened is because the person beside him isn't the creature from his nightmares, it's just his big brother flopping down after working a late shift at the diner.

"Hey, Liam," Stiles greets softly. He's kicked his shoes off already, but he's still in the uniform that smells vaguely like fry grease and chocolate milkshakes. He must have come straight up, only stopping long enough to grab a book from his room next door. "You okay?"

"Yeah," Liam murmurs, nodding. He knows Stiles' routine by now, his two surefire ways of relaxing after a long shift; bubble baths with Hozier playing in the background or cuddling with Liam and reading one of their favorite books. Liam settles back against Stiles' side, tucking his head under Stiles' chin and taking comfort from their combined warmth.

"You wanna read tonight or would you rather sleep?" Liam thinks of the nightmare waiting for him behind his eyelids and it's really no competition. Familiar words rolling off his brother's tongue is far better than a voice like jagged glass.

"Read, please." Stiles opens the book and just the sound of fluttering pages is enough to make Liam's tense shoulders relax. All is right in his world as long as his big brother still has time to read to him.

" _If you take a book with you on a journey,_ " Stiles reads," _an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it... Yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else._ "

"Sights," Liam whispers, cutting his gaze to the glass wind chimes hanging in front of his window. The eight year old shifts under his covers, taking the book out of Stiles' hands and setting it next to him on the bed.

"You okay, Liam?"

"Sights…." His brows furrow as he tries to put the words together in his mind. Stiles waits, watching as Liam's blue eyes slowly clear and light up. "Saw something in my wind chimes again." He points at them, catching glimpses of stone faces with unseeing eyes. Stiles sees none of this, of course, only the faint shine of moonlight. He's not special in the same way that Liam is.

"Anything good?"

"Stone faces." Stiles nods, remembering the stone faces from Liam's drawings. He's been seeing them since he was four, right around the time the other things started getting more pronounced, psychic things. Their father laughs whenever Liam knows things he shouldn't, ruffles his hair and calls him _Radar_. The laughter is rarer these days, ever since they learned that Liam can do things to hurt others.

He can't help the things he does, he doesn't understand them anymore than the others. Just last week, after Stiles was bitten by a dog, he'd made stones fall from the sky and practically demolished the house where the dog had lived. He'd just been so _mad_. No one had been home at the time, but he'd seen the dread collecting in the lines of his father's face when John saw the drawings Liam had done of huge rocks and a smashed house.

He's not sure how he did it, but he caused those stones to fall. Liam, a skinny little thing that can't even reach the cookie jar on the counter, summoned boulders out of thin air and sent them hurtling towards the house out of protective vengeance. He knows Stiles loves him more than anything in the world, but Stiles is scared of him, too.

"I got a phone call today," Stiles says, running his hand up and down his brother's back. The motion soothes both of them, lets them relax further beneath the dinosaur-printed comforter. "That lady from the college really wants you for her investigation."

"Echo House." He knows all about the house, had googled it on Stiles' tablet and beamed when he was able to pull up an article about the house's previous owners.

"Yeah, that's the one. She says I can come with you and she'll pay us enough to put a down payment on that apartment by the beach." He looks up at Stiles with wide eyes, his excited smile infectious. "Dad won't be too pleased, but he's rarely home anyway. Besides, he's got a certain nurse to woo."

"Yeah," Liam agrees. "And we can always spend the nights on Saturdays." He brings up a hand to rest against Stiles' cheek, his thumb rubbing beneath one brown eye. He's getting sleepy, fidgeting and moving just to stay awake, but Stiles doesn't mind. Liam's his baby brother and Stiles will love him no matter what.

"So, you wanna do the Echo House trip, Liam? It's while school's out on break."

"Yeah. Finish the chapter?"

"You got it."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The story title "With Terror Half Wild" comes from Erlkönig by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. All chapter titles have been taken from The Stand by Stephen King. I finished it last week and it was a pretty good read. The book Stiles and Liam reads is Inkspell by Cornelia Funke.
> 
> Full chapter title quote: "Sometimes real love is silent as well as blind."


	2. That Holy Fire

Derek chooses a seat in the front row of the auditorium, slouched down low so the only thing to be seen from the door is a tuft of brown hair. Jennifer is pacing back and forth over the stage, reading off her cards in a quiet voice as a last minute practice run. She's still doing this when the group begins to arrive in a slow trickle.

The first to enter is a young blonde with a definite pout to her lips and a shirt that's a little too tight. She gazes around with an open expression and a devious little smirk, brown eyes resting on the stage for a long moment. Derek recognizes her from Jennifer's files, Erica Reyes—their very own psychometric meant to handle objects in Echo House and decide if there's any ghostly mojo attached to them.

Next comes a middle-aged woman with wild curls and a fiery attitude practically lighting up her face. Her smile is a thing of comfort and she offers a little wave when she spots Derek near the front. Melissa McCall—automatic writer and all-around badass. Derek had chosen her himself and it had been one of the few times that Jennifer had actually listened. Melissa had been the one that tended to him when he'd broken his first bone and she'd held him in a tight hug the night his family was burned alive.

Melissa and Erica settle down in the second row of folding seats, bending their heads together and laughing softly about something. Neither of them seem to notice the next arrival, still dressed in police khakis after a long shift spent on patrol. He's handsome with soft cheeks and a mouth made for smiling. Jordan Parrish—a Jack of all trades with a little bit of every ability and heavy on the telepathy. He settles down in the third row where he has a good view of the stage and the other psychics.

The next man is a little younger than Derek, blond hair styled and a sneer twisting his face into something ugly. He's obviously well off enough that he shouldn't need to be here and Derek wonders why he'd bothered coming at all. Jackson Whittemore—post-cognitive and known man whore. He drops into a seat without any regard for how it wrinkles the expensive fabric of his clothes, rolling his eyes when the next arrival sits down a couple seats away from him in the fourth row.

The new arrival, much like Melissa, is old enough to be a father to the rest of the arrivals. There's a hardness to him, rough edges and straight shoulders with wrinkles deeply carved near his eyes and around his mouth. Deucalion Blackwood—precognitive.

Even with how big the auditorium is, there's a definite pulse in the air with all these powerful psychics gathered together. There's not a psychic bone in Derek's body, but he can feel the stirring of air, the static charge that makes the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

"Alright," Jennifer says, stepping up behind the podium. "If everyone's settled, I'd like to begin." Their gazes are drawn to her, chatter giving way to respectful silence. Jennifer looks over the crowd, but the Stilinskis haven't shown and there's no point in delaying things any further.

"You got this," Derek mouths when her eyes land on him, giving her two thumbs-up.

"Despite what some people may think, psychic powers have no moral gradient. They're neither good nor bad much like the technology we use is neither good nor bad. Houses are different. Shirley Jackson had it right that some houses are born bad." Jennifer had read that Shirley Jackson book countless times, drawing all sorts of connections between it and the Hale family manse. Derek's developed a pavlovian response any time the book is mentioned, he gets a case of blue balls whenever he hears so much as a quote. "Echo House is the prime example of this."

Jennifer presses a button on the control pad in front of her and the lights dim, another button bringing up a picture of Echo House on the screen behind her. Vines cling to crumbling bricks, climbing higher and higher like they're trying to choke the life out of the house. A big part of Derek hopes that they succeed.

"I knew it was big, but that's enormous," Melissa says. It had been one of the biggest houses in California for a long time, it still is depending on the day. A great big house filled with dust and ghosts.

"Yes, Melissa, it's certainly that. It's also an enormous dead cell." The picture changes to another part of Echo House, showcasing the pointed roofs and numerous chimney stacks. "There have been no overt manifestations in Echo House since 1995 or so. I believe that houses have their own inner lights that may or may not be conscious. If Echo House ever achieved consciousness, then it manifested itself early."

Another picture in the slideshow, this one showing a busy street from 1906. Derek recognizes it vaguely from the pictures Jennifer had picked through last week. She'd stayed up well into the night putting this slideshow together while Derek had sprawled over their bed wondering how she'd dump him after Echo House's been destroyed.

"The California of one hundred years ago was a different world," Jennifer continues," more than any of us could imagine. Survival was an actual issue, not a TV show. Bandits were usually the ones to make any sort of fortune, including the man who commissioned Echo House to be built. Peter Ian Hale is who I'm speaking of, an oil tycoon that had his home built at the top of Spring Street for everyone to see and to impress the woman he was courting. His company, Alpha Oil, brought in money all the way up to 1950 until his wife disappeared."

The picture that appears now is of a beautiful young woman with a small nose and a cold smile. Corinne Hale is the one everyone pictures when they hear of Echo House, the matriarch rumored to have kept the family together well after her husband's death. Derek looks at her and thinks of stained glass and sawdust, a hissing voice. _Build with us, Der_. Derek shakes his head roughly, pushing out all traces of rot from his mind.

The picture has changed once more, the bare bones of the house before the bricks had been laid. There are a smattering of workers visible, black and white shapes that are out of focus, haloed by sunlight. Derek can almost hear the hammers beating nails into wood.

"The trouble with Echo House started even before there was a house," Jennifer is saying. "Construction crews worked twenty-four hours a day, most of them Chinese who would work cheap, only stopping when they ran out of lumber. Even then, it wouldn't take long for more lumber to arrive and whips to be cracked. Unfortunately for the workers, the ground they were digging up seemed to drive people insane.

"On the same day Peter brought Corinne out to see the house for the first time, the foreman had an argument with one of the teamsters, which resulted in him getting shot. The teamster, Harry Corbin, dropped the rifle back in the wagon and took off to a saloon for a drink. The police found him there and dragged him off to jail where he later scratched his eyes out and bled to death. It's my belief that Harry Corbin may have been Echo House's first victim. First _male_ victim, that is."

"Family legend is that he saw Native Americans in the jail cell with him," Derek says, just loud enough to be heard. "The ground is sour." Jennifer stops herself from rolling her eyes, but only just. "Sorry, just thought you guys would find that interesting." He slides farther down in the seat, legs stretched out in front of him.

"As I said, Harry Corbin was Echo House's first official victim. There's always been a difference with how the men and women were treated."

"How do you mean," Jordan asks.

"All in good time." The picture changes to one of a happy family the day of a wedding; Corinne and Peter in the middle and impeccably dressed, four little girls standing in front of them with a preacher in the back. "Peter Hale and Corinne Tate were married on November twelfth in 1907. There was a twenty-year age gap between the two of them, nothing too unheard of or scandalous back then.

"By the time they said their vows, Echo House had been under construction for a year and had already seen three deaths on the property aside from the foreman. One man was decapitated by a sheet of falling glass, another fell from a scaffold and broke his neck, and the third choked to death on a piece of apple." The picture changes to a completed version of the house, capturing its former beauty. "This is what the house looked like when it was initially completed in 1909 and, in case your memory needs refreshing, _this_ is what it looks like now." An aerial view, showing the sagging roofs, overgrown ivy, and crumbling chimneys; it was larger than the last picture, larger even than the pictures from the 1950's.

"It's as if it metastasized," Erica says, confusion plain in her voice.

"How many rooms does the house have," Deucalion asks, the sound of a pen tapping against paper audible.

"Depends on the day," Derek says. "You can count on Monday and come up with seventy-four only to come back a week later and get eighty-seven.

"But that's impossible," Melissa says, not sounding so sure.

"That's Echo House, Mel. It likes to keep people on their toes."

"Exactly how many people have disappeared," Jordan asks, derailing Jennifer's schedule even more. There's frustration in the woman's eyes, her tense shoulders growing tenser the further off-subject the group goes. "Surely there's an accurate account of that."

"Twenty-three since the end of the first World War," she answers. "Altogether, five men died and eighteen women disappeared. Echo House has always been particularly fond of the ladies." The chatter starts back up, conspiratorial and suspicious. Derek slaps a hand against his forehead. "Please," she hurries on to say," remember that we're speaking about a house that fell dormant years ago."

"It better be," Erica says," because five thousand dollars isn't enough if it isn't." Derek had charged two hundred and a blowjob for access to the place, he'd wound up getting one-fifty and a Valium in his drink.

"When was the last disappearance," Jordan asks.

"About thirty years ago," Jennifer says, impatience coloring her tone. "There have been no observable phenomena since—"

"Who was the last one," Erica interrupts.

"We've got a lot to cover, so we can't focus on that right now—"

"It was a woman on the Historical Society's annual tour," Derek interrupts. He feels a jolt of satisfaction as she turns narrowed eyes on him. He doesn't love Jennifer, he's never loved any of his girlfriends, but he'd tried to make their relationship something stable. Fuck her for just using him to get at the house. "She was with the group when they went up the stairs and no one realized she was missing until the tour was completed. They didn't find her, but they did find her purse." He'd been called to deal with the scandal and he'd shut the place down for good. One ruined purse, mangled and bloody, was the final straw.

"Are you finished?" Jennifer's tone is sharp and her brows are raised and Derek gives her a lazy smile in response. "The lady's name was Liza Albert. Since her disappearance, the house has been closed to tours. Only the descendant and groundskeeper are allowed on the property. Without the psychic energy to feed on, the house seemed to fall asleep, then into a coma. Now it's classified as a—"

"A dead cell," Jackson finishes.

"That's right." She takes a breath, trying to get her thoughts back on track. "Echo House wasn't finished when Peter and Corinne got married and they were in no hurry to set up housekeeping. They passed the time with a year-long honeymoon that took them all over the globe from Egypt to Paris and everywhere in between. Peter's favorite part of the tour was Africa." The aerial shot changes to Peter standing in front of a dead elephant, hunting rifle propped against his shoulder as he smiles broadly. "Corinne didn't enjoy it quite as much. In fact, she nearly died."

"Was it malaria," Erica asks.

"Probably not. In her diary, she called it 'an unmentionable disease carried by men and suffered by women'." The next picture is of Peter with yet another hunting trophy to line the walls of their home, ivory tusks had apparently been a status of wealth. "Doesn't exactly look prostrate with worry, does he? Thanks to one of the natives in the village named Marin Morrell, Corinne recovered. When she and Peter finally took up residence in Echo House, she was pregnant. January 1909, that would've thought the house was finished, but he didn't know the house would never be done. Not in his lifetime, not in hers.

"What makes Echo House one of the world's most fascinating psychic artifacts is that the house continued to grow until its death in 1995 or 1996. Until 1950 changes and additions were made according to the will of Corinne Hale, and her will, ladies and gentlemen, was iron. After 1950, Echo House grew on its own. In the fall of 1909, Corinne gave birth to a son."

"Grampy," Derek announces. He'd liked the old man, he'd told Derek all kinds of stories about his childhood and snuck him sweets when his parents had been fighting. He practically raised Derek until he died ten years ago.

"Your grandfather, really," Erica asks. He doesn't have to turn in his seat to know she's smiling. Erica seems like a generally happy person, the type you'd want to bring along on any sort of outing.

"I'm afraid so."

"He was named Laurent after Corinne's father," Jennifer says, ignoring the interruption. "According to her diary, Peter wasn't too pleased about her choice of names but he also knew better than to fight her on it. Marin, the woman who came back from Africa with her, saw her through the difficult labor. In her diary, Corinne never refers to Marin as her servant. First, she calls her a friend and later her sister. Corinne's next child was born in 1911, a daughter with a withered arm she named Cora. She blamed the defect on her African sickness and her husband's sexual appetites. In her diary she wrote,' In my mind they are one. Damn all men'."

"I'm surprised she didn't kill old Peter for cheating." No one else seems to hear this remark, all eyes focused on Jennifer. She really does create a presence up there on the stage, she has a magnetism that would make her perfect for TV.

"In the years following the birth of Cora, Corinne became convinced that her fever, which recurred periodically, would kill her young. That made her easy game for Madame Kit, otherwise known as Kira Yukimura to police in San Francisco. Not even Marin could convince her the woman was a fraud. Fake or not, Kira changed Corinne's life in August of 1914."

"What did she tell her," Erica asks.

"That Great gram wouldn't die until the house was finished," Derek answers, bored. "Great gram told her it _was_ finished, and Madame K. told her,' It isn't finished until you say it's finished. Until _you_ say'."

"Corinne took it seriously," Jennifer continues. "Probably she was right to. Everything else aside, she never had another attack of her African fever."

"It was probably just psychosomatic," Jackson grumbles from the back.

"Probably just PMS, right, Jack," Derek mocks.

"I wouldn't be at all surprised." Derek shares a glance with Jennifer and they roll their eyes in unison. They've heard this argument enough times that they know better than to engage. They both know that it was an STD, they know Peter had to have a series of injections in a sensitive place, and that's all that matters.

"A new wing started going up the next week," Jennifer says, ignoring Jackson's idiocy.

"What did her husband have to say about that," Melissa asks with a laugh.

"Nothing," Derek answers again. "She gave him a son in 1909, a daughter in 1911. She had a withered arm, but the son was fine, and his heir was all Peter actually cared about. In his mind, I'd say Corinne had fulfilled her function and could do as she pleased. Would you agree?"

"Yes," Jennifer nods. "Besides, he had affairs of his own to tend to. Corinne continued to make additions to the house until her disappearance in 1950, over forty years of well-financed eccentricity. When she ran out of conventional things to build, she hired a series of contractors and architects to build unconventional stuff."

"Such as," Deucalion probes.

"The so-called Tower Folly was completed in 1921. Peter jumped to his death from it two years later."

"Was it suicide," Jordan asks," or did he run into something he couldn't deal with?"

"The certificate claimed it was an accidental death."

"The gossip said suicide or ghosts," Derek says. "My money's on the latter." There had been a rumor that Corinne and Marin had something to do with it. He wouldn't be at all surprised given the fiery nature of the women in his family. He's seen his mother take a knife after his father when the man got caught with their maid.

"In any case," Jennifer says," during its active years, and they were very active, women in Echo House had a tendency to turn up missing and men had a tendency to turn up dead."

"The bad days are over," Deucalion comments. "You're certain about that?"

"I'm positive."

"Then what exactly do you want from us, Miss Blake," Jordan asks. The question is on everybody's mind, plain on their faces. Jennifer presses a button and the lights flicker on again, Derek squinting in the sudden brilliance.

"First off, how about we all get on a first-name basis? That'll make things a little less difficult between all of us. After all, this is a difficult enough field without us adding to it. People either don't understand our goals or refuse to credit our findings. Some people are actively cruel…." Jennifer trails off, lost in bad memories. Derek doesn't have to be psychic to know she's thinking of that prick Argent.

"Research goals," Derek prompts, drawing her out of her thoughts.

"Right, yeah. My research goals specify measurable psychic phenomena; hard data, telemetry readouts, and anomalous energy levels. I want readouts that even the most stupid, sarcastic, obtuse member of this so-called scientific department will have to accept. If I get a little crazy on the subject from time to time, please forgive me. I've put in a lot of long days."

"If Echo House is a dead cell, how much proof can you expect to find there," Melissa asks. Her voice is soft and sweet, perfect for telling little kids bedtime stories. Derek has a feeling that the sweetness can just as quickly change to something flat and sharp enough to strip a person down to their bones.

"Echo House is much like a dead frog, apply enough electricity and you're sure to get a twitch. In this case, you people are my electricity. My goal is a modest one, I just want a single twitch, one single twitch. If I get that my reputation will be secure for the rest of my life. More importantly, together we can legitimize a branch of psychology that has been treated like a poor relation for far too long."

"Better get it this weekend," Jackson quips. "I heard it's being torn down come July."

"Harris Condominiums, the future," Derek says sarcastically. "Soon Echo House will be a distant memory and the property will be someone else's problem."

"You're gonna let them tear it down," Melissa asks incredulously. "But it's a piece of history."

"History doesn't pay rent and I'm broke. It may not be a noble reason, but it means I can keep my apartment for another two months."

"Are we the whole team," Deucalion asks.

"I was hoping for one more, but that's looking iffy," Jennifer admits, gaze still roving around the auditorium. "If I have to make do with you five, then I'll count myself lucky. I'll see you this Friday at two PM sharp in the parking lot. I'm sure it will be a Memorial Day weekend you won't soon forget." Derek really hopes she's wrong about that. He prefers any visits to the family homestead to be boring and not at all remarkable.

"Anything else?"

"Before we left, I was hoping we could close with a circle." The psychics aren't quick to jump up, but they do all join Jennifer in front of the stage, Derek slinking over and holding hands with Jackson and Deucalion. Jackson's hand is slick with something, Derek thinks it might be lotion, but Deucalion's is dry and strong against his own.

"This sort of thing went out with high-buttoned shoes," Jackson grumbles. He's a sour person in general and Derek's pretty sure the guy will end up with a black eye before the weekend is over.

"What would you like us to focus on, Jennifer," Jordan asks, talking over the sourpuss. Jennifer gives a nervous smile, something Derek hasn't seen very often. Jennifer Blake isn't nervous by nature, she's bold and passionate and everything Derek looks for in his partners.

"Um, good thoughts and good will," she says after a moment of deliberation. The others nod and are about to focus on that idea when there's a shuffle of clothing near the back of the auditorium. Derek glances over his shoulder in time to see a young man with a camera stand up.

"Say cheese," the man calls. The others glance up in unison, just in time to see the bright flash of the camera and hear a quiet _click_. The man is gone before Derek can blink away the dark splotches from his vision, the auditorium door drifting shut. By the angry expression on Jennifer's face, it doesn't take a genius to figure out who that had been.

"I've never wanted to hit a student before, but Theo Raeken is making it very appealing."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "Silent white light filled the world. And the righteous and unrighteous alike were consumed in that holy fire."


	3. A Lonely Lunatic

The bar is loud with music and conversation, Erica feeling relaxed for the first time since she left New Orleans. A Fleetwood Mac song is playing on a jukebox, barely heard over the patrons that shout at a soccer match on TV or just shout to be heard in general.

"Deucalion, are you okay," Jordan asks. Erica glances over at the man in question, Deucalion's cheeks a sickly gray color and a light sweat dotting his upper lip. She wants to blame it on the heat that always accompanies large crowds, but that's not quite right.

"I'm fine," he says, but his smile falters. "I'm just gonna go make some room." Erica reaches out to pat his hand, Deucalion's fingers sliding against her palm as he stands and walks away. If she focuses on that shred on contact, she can see a small white pill and feel an ache along the left side of her jaw.

"He looks a bit gray about the gills, doesn't he?" Erica winces, running her fingers over the phantom ache until it fades. Jordan doesn't seem to notice her discomfort, attempting to pour a glass of beer for Melissa.

"Not too much," Melissa warns. "I can handle half a glass, but I'm driving."

"Are you a light-weight," Erica asks, fingers itching to reach across the table and grasp Melissa's hand. She fights the urge, wrapping her hands around her glass just in case. "I could ask the bartender to make you a ginger ale if you'd like."

"No, no, I'll be fine. As long as my son doesn't find out, we'll survive another night." She's smiling and there's no worry in her eyes, so Erica relaxes back in her seat.

"How old's your son?"

"He just turned eighteen." Melissa's smile turns into a grin that makes her entire face light up. "His name's Scott and he's going to school to be a vet." She pulls out her phone and passes it over to Jordan, the lock screen wallpaper showing a happy couple; the boy resembling a puppy, dark brown hair hanging across his forehead while his partner's black hair is braided. "That's Allison, his girlfriend."

"Do we approve of the girlfriend," Jordan asks.

"We do, actually. She's a good girl and she has more common sense than my son ever will. I have a feeling that Scott will be proposing soon enough." Jordan arches his brows and a blush colors Melissa's cheeks. "Scott left his laptop open the last time he was home and I caught a glimpse of one of those create-your-own ring websites. It won't be expensive, but it'll sure be cute."

"I'm sure you'll make certain of that."

"Damn straight." Melissa winks at them and takes a sip of the beer. Erica isn't a big beer drinker, it doesn't react well with her seizure meds. As long as she doesn't drink more than one glass, she should be alright. "How about you two? Any kids to speak of?" Jordan makes a face and shakes his head.

"None for me. I work too much to even think about having a serious boyfriend, let alone a kid."

"I still prefer partying on the weekend rather than changing diapers," Erica says when Melissa looks at her. "My boyfriend's got a little sister that fills the slot pretty well, though. She's a headstrong little thing that likes to start fights she can't win, but I love her." She'd burn the world to cinders if it meant keeping Alicia safe. "If it's not her that I'm rescuing, then I'm trying to get enough college credits to become a CNA."

"Aw, I'll bet that's fun," Melissa says.

"It is mostly. There are rough days, but most of them run smoothly." Erica doesn't mention that most of those rough days are caused by seizures turning her memory into much and her muscles into spasming messes.

"Did I miss anything," Deucalion asks as he rejoins them at the table. His hands are steadier now, the panic gone out of his eyes. Erica doesn't touch him, but it's a close thing.

"Nothing much," Melissa says. "We were just about to send out a search party for you." Deucalion's smile is a little strained, a little out of practice, but there's a warmth to it that Erica likes. "I'd like to propose a toast if that's alright with everyone." There's a murmur of _sures_ and they all raise a glass, looking at Melissa expectantly. "To Echo House." Their glasses clink together lightly, the tinkling sound like chimes in a summer wind.

"You know, Jennifer's still hoping for one more person to join our merry band. Six is the lucky number." Deucalion smiles again, cheeks a little stiff before they soften into something more natural.

"A little boy," Jordan confirms. "Eight years old. I believe our dear professor will be in luck." Unlike Deucalion's smile, Jordan's is entirely too practiced and it's a very good thing that Erica is dedicated to Boyd because she could fall in love with that smile. It's a slight rising of one side, a hint of white teeth behind plush pink lips, a mischievous glint in blue eyes.

"Is that something you see," Erica asks. Jordan's answer is a sly smile that isn't really an answer at all.

"What's your special talent, Erica?"

"Depends on who you ask." She shrugs, running her finger along the rim of her glass. The whistle it creates is low and vibrates through her bones. "My mom likes to say I'm just a smartass and my dad likes to call me the Ghost Whisperer on account of us finding out about my little ability while Melinda Gordon did her thing on TV."

"What do you like to be called?" There's a kindness in all their eyes, a type of shared connection that happens once in a lifetime. There aren't many _real_ psychics in this world and it's so wonderful when she meets one of them. Now here she is, sitting with three others.

"A Touch-Know. I can touch things or people and get a sense of them, like seeing old memories attached to them or getting a feeling. It makes living in New Orleans pretty fun sometimes." There's history bubbling in every inch of New Orleans, even the transplants bring history from other places that lingers behind well after they've gone.

"And you, Deucalion? What can you do?" Deucalion's eyes glaze slightly, caught somewhere in the middle distance like he's trying to think of an answer for a test he didn't study for. There's no desperation, though, no fear. When he answers, his voice can barely be heard over the din of conversation and jukebox tunes.

"Two people in their mid-twenties," he says. "She's in a blue dress, he's in jeans. He's blond, over-golded, he's got a case of Roman hands and Russian fingers." Erica's brows furrow, but then she's following Melissa's astonished gaze to a young couple wandering toward the exit, the boy's hand landing on the woman's ass.

"Oh, you're precognitive," Erica gushes, smiling.

"I can tell a hawk from a handsaw when the wind's in the northwest." Erica wiggles excitedly in her seat, ignoring the tacky _something_ that's making her skirt stick a little. She'll give it a good wash when she gets home again.

"What about you, Melissa?" Melissa blushes and glances away, probably one of the psychics who'd been told to keep a lid on her ability when she was growing up. Erica understands the hatred and distrust of small-minded assholes well enough. She'll get Melissa to open up more before this trip is over.

"I'm an automatic writer," she says.

"A Ouija board," Jordan says, surprised.

"Kinda, yeah. The channel is too wide with the board and planchette, though, too open to interpretation. Here, this is easier." She grabs the menu advertising a fruity drink and digs a pen out of her purse, gazing around the table before settling on Erica. "Think something and let's see if it wants to work tonight."

"Okay," Erica says, squeezing her eyes shut. She's not the best at containing her thoughts, they tend to scatter when she focuses too hard on them, but she does her best this once. "Am I doing it right?"

"You like my smile," Jordan asks, nudging her with his arm. Her eyes snap open and she lurches over the table, snatching the menu out of Melissa's hands to stuff it under her butt. As long as she's sitting on it, then no one can make fun of her. "Don't worry, a lot of people like my smile. A lot of people like everything about me."

"You're a very humble person, aren't you?"

"Oh yes." Jordan's grin is positively wicked, but he's kind enough not to tease her any further.

"You know, you never did tell us what your specialty is." His grin fades to something softer, something more subdued that doesn't look right with his vibrant energy. He draws his glass closer to him, staring down at the beer like it holds all of life's answers. Erica frowns, brushing her fingers over the pulse point of his wrist. "Jordan?"

"I do a little of everything," he says finally, eyes clear again. "What do we know about our new friend, Jackson?" Erica wrinkles her nose in distaste, bringing her hand back around her glass.

"Your friend, not mine."

"I think he's post-cognitive," Melissa supplies. "Maybe seeing the past so often is why he's grumpy." He's more than grumpy, he's a snobby jerk. Erica doesn't say this aloud, of course. She knows better than to judge a book by its cover and maybe Jackson will suck less when she gets to know him.

"Not the most comfortable of talents," Deucalion says. He draws in a slow breath and then he's smiling again, holding up his glass. "Here's to good thoughts and good will." They echo the sentiment and their glasses clink together with a ringing that sounds like prophecy.

The sky has been threatening rain all day, but it really lets loose as Jackson walks into his house. He doesn't bother taking his shoes off as he comes into the entryway, tracking mud and wet grass over the expensive carpets and rugs until he gets to the kitchen. It's near the back of the house, the door partially camouflaged because God forbid California socialites know the Whittemore family has something so gauche as a kitchen.

He goes straight to the freezer, relieved to see that there are no surprises waiting for him this time. Just that afternoon he'd been hoping to find something to snack on and had found dripping red instead, the copper stench of blood filling the room and making his head spin. His father had continued bragging about the new case he'd won, not special enough to see the ghostly images.

Now the freezer is back to normal, the small icicles clear and clinging to the roof. He reaches in and grabs the tub of ice cream before slamming the door shut and grabbing a serving spoon from the wooden box kept just out of reach. He has to climb up onto a counter to get it down, the fine silver David had inherited from Jackson's grandmother.

He doesn't bother to get down once he has the spoon, just settles against the cool tiled wall and starts to eat. He's got the spoon halfway to his mouth, a glob of chocolate dripping onto his jeans, when the hairs along his nape prickle. Goosebumps raise along his arms, not related to his damp jacket.

There, near a door that leads out to the garbage bins, are two forms that remain cast in shadow. He doesn't need the light to know what they look like, mostly bone with brown skin tight over them like jerky, clothes tattered and eaten away by time, hair hanging limply like the yarn atop a doll's head.

"Who are you," he asks, dropping the spoon back into the tub. The figures don't respond, pressing together so tightly that they almost look conjoined. They're not nearly so interesting as all that, one tall and wearing a cocktail dress that went out of fashion eons ago. The other is shorter and wearing a sailor dress that hangs limply around her emaciated frame, the vague outline of one arm not quite right. _Cora Hale_.

 _"You're expected_ ," a voice says, whisper-soft against his ear. Their mouths aren't moving, but the voice comes all the same. Jackson tilts his head to the side, not at all afraid.

"You're from Echo House, aren't you? Head back and tell your mistress that a couple of dead girls aren't scary." He stares them down, daring them to try something when he knows they're nothing but vapor outside of their hunting grounds.

Overhead, a crack of thunder booms and the spirits fade away.

Jennifer's pre-holiday classes always seem to pass slower than any of the others, dragging out like time is made of molasses and the air around it is frozen. When she's finally able to dismiss the last afternoon group of students, she has a migraine building behind her eyes and there's a loose thumbtack in her purse from a bored student with a damn fine aim.

She sighs as she stops outside her office door, taking in the campus newspaper taped to the glass. The headline is cheesy: **Who Ya Gonna Call?** _Controversial University Professor and Psychic Friends to Explore Echo House_. Below the headline is the photo that had been snapped the night before, the psychics in their circle looking right at the camera with various expressions of surprise. She's going to _kill_ that Raeken kid.

Jennifer tears the paper down and crumples it up, just wanting a fucking break when she hears the faint _tap-tap_ of dress shoes on the polished floor behind her. She doesn't have to turn to know who'll be waiting for her, but she does anyway. Gerard Argent is a fat man that likes to pretend that he's important, his white hair shining dully in the afternoon sunlight.

"Shame you can't do the same to the forty-thousand others, eh?"

"People only buy this rag to line their litter boxes," Jennifer says dismissively.

"Probably, but folks will certainly remember the picture on the front page. Such a photo might also be brought up the next time there's a university bond issue brought before the board. A photo like this could put a hundred worthwhile programs to beggary, but what do you care?"

"I assume there's a point to this conversation? Or maybe I should call your daughter and have her take you home for the day." Argent sneers at her and the lick of anger there should probably frighten her. What's he going to do? Sit on her?

"In a hurry to polish your crystals?"

"If that'll end this conversation, then sure. I've got to polish my crystals and stir my cauldron." Jennifer puts a hand into her purse, digging around for her office keys and ignoring the stench of Argent's cologne. It's expensive, all of Argent's things are expensive, but it smells like old roadkill. "Ouch, shit!" Jennifer snaps her hand out, staring down at the pad of her finger.

"Oh, that's a nasty cut." That damn tack. The cut is shallow, but she bleeds like a stuck pig no matter the severity. She rolls her eyes, grabbing her keys and turning her back on Argent to unlock her office door. "Well, I came because I have bad news, old girl."

"I'm only thirty, Argent." She swings the door open so she has an escape route before facing him again, glaring. The next time he calls her old, she's going to remind him of the time he lost his teeth at the staff Christmas party. "What the hell are you talking about? What bad news?"

"The executive committee has been in session regarding tenure." That brings her up short and her brows furrow as she thinks it over. Getting committee members in the same vicinity of the college this close to break is usually impossible and there's no one up for tenure anyway. They'd only do this if….

"Oh, you son of a bitch." He brings up a manila envelope, waving it like it's a trophy he's just won. And, really, that's exactly what it is.

"The committee voted five to two to revoke your tenure. We tried to contact you so you could attend the meeting, you'll find the message on your machine should you bother to check it. Honestly, I'm surprised Casper didn't drop by to tell you." Jennifer's sore hand goes behind her back, the warm blood still dripping down and gathering in her palm. "The general consensus is that the silliness must stop."

"I'll fight you every step of the way."

"Yes, and you'll lose. Your days of haunting this psychology department are most certainly numbered."

"When I come back from Echo House with proof—"

"Proof," Argent scoffs, stepping close enough that she can smell his toothpaste. "Isn't that the rallying cry of crackpots everywhere? The proof is out there? This is getting ridiculous, Jennifer. You used to be a respected writer and lecturer in the field of child psychology, but then you got bitten by this virus."

"It's a legitimate field of psychological investigation!"

"It's a spit in the eye of rational thought!" He cuts his gaze away from her, taking in a few deep breaths to settle himself. They're starting to draw a crowd, but Jennifer can't find it in herself to be embarrassed. To hell with all of them and to hell with this university. "Suppose you did find something, audio recordings or photographs. What difference does it make? What good would it do you when the decision has already been made to kick you out of here?"

Argent's yelling again and spittle is flying, but a cold sort of calm washes over Jennifer. She looks up at Argent and whatever he sees there makes him take a step back.

"I feel remarkably well today, Gerard, in spite of all your crap," she says in a voice like iron. He takes another step back and she follows until he's the one trapped against the wall. Even so much smaller than him, Jennifer's got a presence. She brings up her hand, the uninjured one with the smooth lines and pink polish on the nails. "This is the world we live in and experience with our five senses. The skin is smooth and rational. Every cause has an effect and every effect can be predicted with the right database at hand."

"I don't—" She brings up the other hand now, covered in bright blood that drives Argent flat against the wall when she waves it in front of his face.

"There's a world under that world, blood under the skin. It's a world that's liquid instead of solid, hot instead of just warm." She rubs her hands together and cups his face with a loud _smack_ , and she's not going to lie that she gets a jolt of excitement at his terror. "You don't like it, do you? Don't give me that bullshit about bonds and busted programs when we both know you're just afraid."

"Get off me!" He shoves her backwards and the terror only increases when Jennifer laughs at him, loose-limbed and agile. "If you've given me something—"

"That's what this all comes down to, isn't it? The bottom line? You're afraid of catching something. Go on down to the infirmary and get an AIDs test."

"When this semester's over, you're done here! You hear me? You're done here and you're finished teaching, I'll make sure of it! You're totally insane!" There are tears gathering in his eyes and cutting trails through the blood smeared over his cheeks. Jennifer decides she likes the sight of terror on this bully.

"Have a good day, old boy."

Jennifer stays in her office until dark, grading finals and laughing every now and then when she remembers the fear clouding Argent's blue eyes like cancer. Derek is asleep by the time Jennifer makes it home, his dark hair tousled and highlighted by the bedside lamp. Jennifer pauses in the doorway of their bedroom and thinks, not for the first time, that her boyfriend is so _young_. He's only a few years younger than her, but that difference is staggering sometimes.

Not wanting to wake him, she crosses the room to their shared desk and hunts around for a spare pen. She wants to study her files a bit more before going to bed and she can do that just fine in a warm bath.

"You're late, teach." The smile comes naturally to her face as she turns to look at the bed. Derek's still lying over the mattress like a starfish, but his green eyes are open and fixed on her. She thinks of a house cat in the afternoon, sprawled out in a beam of sunlight after a long day of hunting mice.

"I had some last minute details to iron out before classes ended." He holds out a hand and she moves away from the desk, her pen forgotten as she lets him pull her down. Jennifer straddles his waist, her palms flat against his chest with no trace of blood left on them. "Argent got my tenure revoked."

"That bastard! Can he do that?" She loves this, how passionate Derek is as he narrows his eyes in anger on her behalf.

"Probably, yeah. That picture Raeken took last night made us look like the Stupid family with me as the head Stupid." She shakes her head, the cold calm now pressed way deep down. "It doesn't matter because I got a phone call today from a certain young man."

"Should I be jealous?"

"Oh yes." She giggles like a little girl, her toes curling in her excitement. "Stiles accepted the twelve thousand dollars, so he and Liam will be coming along on our field trip. When I come back from Echo House with hard data, there'll be four dozen universities willing to hire me. First, though, I think I'll write a book."

"Careful, you remember what happened to dear Doctor Montague." Derek's nose wrinkles and he rolls his eyes. "You got me making _Hill House_ references, Jennifer. This is just wrong on so many levels." She throws her head back to laugh even though part of her is starting to hate this man. How dare he compare her to that quack? She would never let a situation get so out of hand like he had. And, anyway, _Hill House_ is a good book.

"I don't have to worry about that."

"Yeah, but I once heard you say that the only certainty when dealing with the paranormal is that nothing is certain. What if you spend three days in Echo House and nothing happens?" That had been a legitimate worry before Stiles called, but now she has no doubts about how her weekend will go.

"Liam Stilinski's presence guarantees that something will happen." She rolls off of him and burrows under the blanket, her pink-polished nails standing out sharply against the black fabric. "You know, Echo House isn't really a dead cell. Liam is going to wake it up and if you would just let it stand another six months, the research possibilities—"

"Hell no," Derek interrupts, shaking his head. "That place is coming down in July and I can't wait." She presses her lips together to keep from yelling, staring up at the ceiling. There's a crack there that reminds her of a tree, the limbs bare as winter wraps around it. When she looks at Derek again, his eyes have started to droop.

"How can _you_ hate it so much?" The sheer disbelief that lights up his face is almost comical, a Looney Tunes reaction that makes her laugh before she can catch herself. It feels so good to laugh like this after a month of cold silence resting between them.

"It eats my relatives!" His voice is high and even he's having a hard time holding back his laughter. "Did you miss that in your research?" They laugh again, uncontrollable giggles like kids at a sleepover instead of grown adults. When it dies down, the room feels stifling.

"It just…. It means so much to me."

"Yeah, maybe a little too much." Derek rolls onto his side long enough to flick off his bedside lamp, then he flops onto his back again. His gilded hair is almost purple-black in the moonlight and that crack on the ceiling fills with shadows. "We're gonna need some downtime when this is over, some serious rest and relaxation."

They don't talk anymore after that and Derek never notices that Jennifer spends the rest of the night on the couch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "He was a clot looking for a place to happen, a splinter of bone hunting a soft organ to puncture, a lonely lunatic cell looking for a mate - they would set up housekeeping and raise themselves a cozy little malignant tumor."


	4. Its Own Tidal Flow

Friday morning dawns clear and bright, the road spread out beneath the tires of a tired station wagon like a black ribbon. Theo Raeken watches it unfold and roll away in the side mirror, his head propped up by the window. He's twenty-three and he's decided it's cruel and unusual punishment to be woken up before noon during school holidays. Beside him, in charge of driving and keeping an endless loop of Johnny Cash playing on the radio, Gerard Argent is wide awake. Theo doesn't understand how a man his age still has so much energy. The guy is a dinosaur, he should be sitting in an armchair with a badly knitted afghan and a racist story to pass on.

"Are you still awake over there?"

"No," Theo grunts. He hadn't slept well the night before, he'd had a nightmare about changing rooms and dangling feet reflected a thousand times on a glass floor. "I'm not here at all, Professor. I'm actually back in my dorm room and you're slipping into insanity." He glances over at Argent, but the older man is still frowning over the steering wheel. Maybe the muscles responsible for smiling have disintegrated. Is that a thing? He should have paid more attention in biology.

There's a faint squeal as Argent presses on the breaks, the station wagon jerking ever so slightly as though in protest. Beyond the windshield, Echo House's iron gates have risen up out of the ground, topped with arrowheads and blanketed with creeping vines. They throw off some serious Dante vibes: _Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'entrate_.

"Do you have your cell phone," Argent asks, glancing over at him expectantly. Theo has to swallow a few times before he can answer, throat feeling raw and dry. Maybe he's coming down with something.

"Yeah, right here." He pats his shirt pocket for emphasis, but the movement feels awkward and he can't tear his gaze from the imposing gate. How could any human ever see a gate like that and think it's a good idea to poke around on the other side of it? That's a gate meant to keep people _out_.

"And you've got plenty of film?"

"It's digital." He finally manages to look at Argent again, anxiety shooting through his veins like smack. "Look, Professor, I don't know if this is such a good idea." The engine is cut and then Argent's opening his door, but even he hesitates to get out. They lock gazes, a bead of fear rolling down Theo's spine.

"Don't tell me you're _afraid_." Argent's laugh is a forced thing, too strained to be natural as he steps out into the early morning light. Theo follows suit because he's not a pussy, he's not afraid of some stupid _house_.

"Of course I'm not. It's just…. Big." Theo gestures weakly at the brick and mortar monstrosity crouched in overgrown weeds like an African cat readying to pounce. "What if I get lost in there?"

"You're really being ridiculous." Argent goes around the car to the trunk, studiously avoiding the house. He keeps his head ducked down until he's got the trunk lid opened to blot out the gate, grabbing Theo's overnight bag and holding it out for him to take. Even when that's done, he makes sure to look at Theo instead of the house. "You're about to step out in the real world in a couple of weeks. _That's_ where you're apt to get lost."

"Is this supposed to be comforting?" Argent heaves a sigh and slams the trunk shut in one movement that's more intimidating than it should be.

"If you nail this story, you can write your own ticket. I thought that's what you wanted."

"Yeah, but I have to be alive to do that." Theo follows Argent back to the driver's side, watching the old man fold himself into the car and shut the door. He's certain the glass would have rattled in its frame had it not been rolled down. "I can't exactly become an award-winning journalist if I'm walled up alive because a group of crackpots caught me taking pictures of them."

"Call me when you get the pictures and either I or my daughter will come get you." Argent bends down and comes back up with a gate-opener, handing the cold plastic off to Theo with a grim sort of excitement. _A pedestrian cruising slowly past a car accident_ , Theo thinks with a shiver. "Try and get a good picture of them being psychic."

"Professor Argent, I don't think—" The car sputters to life and cuts him off, a deliberate choice on Argent's part that makes Theo want to throttle him.

"Stiff upper, dear boy!" And then he's peeling off down the street, leaving a trail of burned rubber in his wake. Theo swallows hard as he turns to face the gate, all alone on the residential street. The neighbors are still sleeping, their curtains drawn tight against the invading daylight.

"That wasn't comforting," Theo mutters. "Not even brutally comforting. God, Argent's such a _dick_." He presses the button with more force than necessary, the gates swinging inward with a protesting creak that would sound right at home in a horror movie. "Oh, Jesus…."

Theo squares his shoulders and starts down the long driveway, the gates closing behind him and dead leaves skittering ahead of him in a race. The driveway itself is remarkably well taken care of, no cracks or potholes to speak of as it winds along around a large fountain and then disappears around the right side of the house. He can't see where it ends, but he imagines it to be a dilapidated carriage house. The fountain is a grand thing, solid stone with three tiers and a cherub posing on its toes at the very top. The basins are clogged with leaves and moss, stray weeds and vines trying to reclaim it like they have the rest of the house. With all the vines, it almost looks as though the little cherub is fighting for its life.

Beyond this is a little tunnel, maybe five feet long in all, the base of it meeting the house and then continuing upward into one of several towers. He imagines it must have been beautiful once upon a time ago, back when sunlight turned the bricks a rosy color and the ivy had been stripped away. Now it reminds him of a beast's mouth, jaws opened wide as it waits for its prey to wander inside.

 _The Alaskan Bull Worm_ , he thinks with a hysterical, choked laugh.

Theo licks his lips and forces himself to keep moving, taking large strides through the tunnel until he's finally standing at the front doors. They're heavy things made of thick wood, probably meant to last eighty years or more. _They don't make 'em like this anymore_ , he thinks, digging a ring of keys out of his pocket. _Whoever_ they _are, anyway_.

"Solarium," he reads off and jumps as his own voice echoes back to him. He glances around to make sure he's still alone, then looks back to the keys with their engraved names. "Tool-shed, back door, front door…." The correct key in hand, he readies to insert it in the lock only to have the door swing open before he can touch it.

"Are you Mister Raeken," the woman on the other side asks. She's tall and lean, a beautiful woman with sharp features that could be anywhere from twenty to seventy, but always a sight to behold. The sunlight makes her dark skin gleam, reflecting a rosy blush faint along her cheekbones. Her hair is hidden beneath a bright red headwrap, knotted above her forehead to keep it in place.

"Yeah, that's me. I thought this place was supposed to be empty."

"Come in, sir. You're expected." Theo's heart leaps into his throat as though she'd just threatened to disembowel him rather than offer an invitation. Electricity makes his arms ache and his hair stand on end, rooting him to the spot even as the woman opens the door wider for him to enter. "This way." He forces himself to move despite the agonizing fear making his belly cramp, turning to shut the door behind him. When he faces the entry hall where the woman should still be waiting, he's alone.

"Ma'am? Where are you?"

"This way, sir." Her voice echoes differently than his own had moments ago, growing deeper, warped like old wood left out in the rain. He shuffles forward to a long table set up at the end of the hall, tucked between the two staircases leading up to the second landing. The table is loaded down with equipment and it's only natural that he sets the gate-opener on it as well.

"Hello?"

"Through here." Theo moves through an archway on the left, following the hall out into a solarium that's been overrun with dead things. There's not a trace of greenery to be found in what had once been a beautiful room, the wicker furniture toppled and brown with age, one of the tables splintered and leaning drunkenly to the right.

"Ma'am, I seem to have lost you." Theo shuts the door behind him like he'd done the front door, stepping down onto cobblestones worn smooth by age and many feet. The solarium appears to be empty apart from himself and the dead plants, but he could have sworn that the woman's voice came from in here. "Is anyone here?"

Theo moves forward along the path, pushing spidery limbs away from him and brushing cobwebs down. He stops once he spots something red on the floor, the fabric matching the headwrap the woman had worn. Had she dropped it? Maybe it hadn't been secured and she doesn't want him to see her hair. He bends with the idea to give it back to her, only to draw back with a sharp breath when he finds it crawling with beetles, the fabric little more than tatters.

"Screw this," he says in a trembling voice. He pushes past the limbs again and yanks on the door, his shoulder aching with the force of it. The doorknob rattles as he turns it, but the door itself remains stubbornly shut. "This isn't funny! Let me out!" The little squares of glass rattle in their frames as he yanks furiously. "Let me out!"

Getting no answer, Theo turns and storms through the solarium, trying his best not to think how much like reaching hands those stems are. A sharp sting on his neck brings him up short and a second one sends him running against a pair of old doors toward the back. Behind him, following him, a few bees are swarming to sting him again for interrupting their sleep.

"Hey, I'm in the greenhouse! Help me!" He throws himself against the door, beating at the glass until his knuckles burst open. The glass remains intact, only a smear of red to show anyone tried to break it. "Help me!" He turns when the buzzing dies away, stumbling forward a couple of feet with his chest heaving as he tries to breathe past the panic attack. He yanks his cell out of his pocket and keeps walking, clumsy fingers trying to find Argent's number only to have the phone tumble out of his hands as the bees swarm again. "Stop it! Help me! Somebody—" He trips over his own feet and lands hard enough to make his teeth rattle.

Theo wants to sob, so he does. He wants to curl up in a ball, but he reminds himself that he's a grown man and should do the grown-up thing. He ends up curling into a ball for a few minutes anyway, just until the bees have lost interest in him and he can stand without being stung.

Without the constant buzzing of his own screams, the solarium is almost oppressively quiet. It's the type of silence reserved for old cathedrals or crypts, a holy thing not meant to be broken. Except nothing about Echo House is holy, nothing from its stained glass to the dark wood frames could be worshiped as anything but evil.

Theo's just gotten his feet back under him when he goes stock still, an old instinct telling him that to move is to die. The fine hairs along his nape rise and goosebumps spread along his bare arms, the sensation making him shiver with dreadful anticipation. Slowly, very slowly, he tilts his head back to see what's hunting him. The creature is dark and hunched, and its talons sink into the meat of his shoulders as it yanks him off the ground.

The doors open easily and the smear of red is cleaned from the glass panes by invisible hands.

It's two o'clock Friday afternoon, the sun is warm on the back of his neck, and Derek Hale feels like a soldier about to head into battle. Perhaps that's a good analogy considering he's about to go to the one place on God's green earth that actively hunts his relatives. It's like knowing the full plot of _The Most Dangerous Game_ and deciding to pay old Zaroff a visit anyway.

He's just about to suggest calling this whole thing off when a Rolls-Royce screeches to a halt in front of their borrowed van and the Whittemorees spill out. Jackson is in a suit, this one a pale yellow like fresh lemonade that he doesn't look at all comfortable in. His father is in a suit of coal black, his dark hair slicked off his face with pomade and a sinful red pocket square that looks about ready to abandon ship.

Jackson grabs his suitcase from the back and starts towards the group waiting a few feet away, but then his father is shuffling after him in polished shoes.

"Wait," he calls, voice sharp. "Don't make me chase you, Jackson."

"David, I'm okay," he grumbles. He even makes it another three feet before a hand has latched onto his arm and spun him around. For being two feet shorter, Mister Whittemore still has the strength to man-handle his son into submission. Derek would feel bad for the guy if Jackson wasn't such a prick.

"Oh yes, you're always okay. Now, listen to me. If anything happens that you can't handle, anything beyond a few telesmic manifestations, call me and I'll come get you." Jesus, this is better than anything TV can come up with. Derek's still loading equipment in the van's trunk, but ninety percent of his attention is on his new favorite reality show: Whittemore Family Rules.

"I will, David. Now I have to go." Poor Jackson tries to start forward again, but his dad has got a hand flat against his chest to keep him in place.

"You call me anyway so I know you're alright." Jackson grumbles something else too low for Derek to make out, then David's talking again. "Then let them wait! They won't get much done without you. Now, pretend to be a good son and give me a hug." David drags Jackson against him and Derek decides this is the best source of entertainment for a hundred miles or more. Beside him, Jennifer lets out a choked sound that might have been laughter.

"We should have recorded that," Derek says as Jackson's finally allowed to join the other four psychics. "If this ghost business doesn't work out, we could branch out into daddy issues and make bank."

"That's so bad," Jennifer whispers, but she's smiling too.

"Off to the house on haunted hill, I see," Argent says, coming down the university's front steps. Jennifer and Derek's smiles transform into matching sneers as they turn to address the professor. He's a broad man, old and imposing like a crusty sea captain or some villain in a child's book. Derek wants to punch him in the face. "Oh…." Argent's amusement turns sour as he gets a good look at the equipment in the van. "That's about a hundred thousand dollars' worth of department equipment."

"I've got all the proper paperwork signed in all the proper places if you'd like to see it."

"Who signed it? Jesus, it was Tara wasn't it?"

"Turns out she can be much more lenient while you're away on vacation. It also helps that she likes me and thinks of you as a walking, talking horse's ass." Derek doesn't snort, but it's a close thing. "Now, is there a point to this little conversation or do you just like hearing your own voice?"

"I'm just trying to be pleasant." Derek really does snort this time, drawing Argent's attention to him. He doesn't shrink under it like others might have. Others hadn't grown up under Talia Hale's strict regime either and she's a whole lot scarier when she's got a wooden spoon in hand than Argent could ever be no matter which weapon he decided on.

"Look, buddy, we're kind of in a hurry and we don't have time for your bullshit dick-measuring competition," Derek says. "By the way, metaphorically speaking, Jennifer's dick is way bigger than yours, my friend. She could pistol-whip you with that thing." Argent sputters like an old car and storms off without another word. Derek pauses a beat, then glances down at Jennifer. "I think that went well."

"Oh, very well," she nods. "Perfectly. My metaphorical dick is extremely pleased with you at the moment."

"Metaphorical and literal dicks are always pleased with someone. They're like puppies, a little petting goes a long way." Jennifer smacks his arm playfully and the smile that lights up her face is enough to make Derek's heart stutter. Seeing her like this, so carefree, makes him realize how little he's caused such a reaction in the time they've been together. He doesn't make her happy often enough.

By the time they finish loading the equipment and get the van doors shut, two new people have joined their paddling of ducklings. The older one is a man around Derek's age, one hundred and forty pounds soaking wet with dark brown eyes. The younger boy is short for his age, sunlight casting streaks of color through his pale hair. The pair share a smile and the curve of their jaws, the brother duo that Jennifer has been pining for. He's almost disappointed that they've made it.

"Mieczysław," Jennifer grins, jogging over to greet her. "Or do you prefer Stiles?"

"Either is fine," Stiles shrugs. He's got one hand protectively curled over Liam's shoulder, nails blunt and one twitch away from digging into Liam's collarbone. Behind them, the wheels of some bikes begin to spin by themselves, no breeze or passengers around to make them go. "Don't be such a show-off, Liam." The wheels lock into place with a squeal of rubber and Liam grins up at the group with something like pride. Derek loves this kid already.

"Good God, he's retarded," Jackson grumbles under his breath. None of the group quite know how to react when Jordan's eyes snap to Jackson's and suddenly the man is lying flat on his back. A faint pulse echoes from Jordan's chest, a low sizzle like grease in a pan.

"Keep your opinions about Liam to yourself and we won't ask you any embarrassing questions about your relationship with your father," Jordan says, eyes going hard and cold. There's no excuse for what Jackson had said and Derek decides to make his life a living hell if he keeps taking out his frustration on the kid.

"Well, with that out of the way, I think we're ready," Jennifer says with an excited clap of her hands. The group piles into the van with Jordan and Derek up front and the others making due with the two remaining bench seats. It's a tight fit, almost impossible and certainly illegal, but they only have to make it work for a few miles.

The drive to the house only lasts an hour, most of that time spent in traffic as Beacon Hills comes to life around them and people head off for the long weekend. The house is looming ahead of them far too soon for Derek's liking, just as horrible as it had been in the distorted memories of childhood. The wrought iron gates are still beautiful despite the vines crawling up them, an elaborate E welded into one side while an equally elaborate H has been welded into the other side.

"There she is," Derek murmurs, lightly tapping the breaks until the van has stopped. What would happen if he hadn't stopped? Would he have plunged right through those gates and torn them to shreds or would the van have crumpled like a paper ball while Echo House remained upright?

"It seems to be looking at us," Melissa says, voice wavering.

"It is," Jordan confirms.

Derek's fingers tighten around the wheel convulsively as the world slides away, dumping him in an alternate reality where the light is sepia-toned and stinks of sawdust. Derek is small in this reality, a little boy again as he climbs a mountain's worth of stairs until his little legs are aching with the effort.

"Mommy," he calls out in a reedy voice. His heart is racing and fear is acidic on his tongue as he finally comes off of the never-ending staircase. Waiting beyond is a room filled with dusty old things, an attic of sorts with stained glass patterns thrown across his feet haphazardly.

Whispers draw him farther into the room just like they'd drawn him through endless hallways and stairs. There's an insistent pulling in his chest, a string taut and tight around his heart that's urging him to just keep moving. To stop moving means to drown in this vast ocean of wood and brick and heartache.

"Mommy, are you in here? I'm scared."

" _Derek_ ," a voice whispers, louder than the others.

"Mommy?" He moves past the junk piled up on either side of him, past cobwebs and through dust motes until he stops at the foot of impossible stairs. There shouldn't be another level if he's already in the attic, this should be the end of it all. But it's not because Echo House, as he'll come to know, is never satisfied with just a few floors and twisty staircases. Echo House always wants _more_.

"Derek? Are you okay?" The world lurches again, a nauseating twist that drops him back in his grown body and a reality full of technicolor. He wonders how Dorothy kept from getting seasick when she first stepped out into Munchkinland. "Are you okay?" The voice belongs to Jordan now, filled with concern.

"Huh," Derek asks stupidly. "Yeah, I'm fine." Jordan doesn't look like he believes that, but he's kind enough not to comment and Derek is thankful. Swallowing thickly, he grabs the plastic opener and presses the button, the gate swinging open with barely a squeal. He guides the van along the same path Theo Raeken had taken a few hours earlier, looping around and parking in front of the tunnel. The fountain with its fierce cherub is on the driver's side, which means he'd have to hunch forward past Jordan to see the family manse. It's a deliberate decision on Derek's part and, once again, Jordan is kind enough not to say anything.

Getting out of the van proves harder than getting in had been for the people in the back, long legs and short ones alike all twisted together. Erica is the first to escape into the open air, the others wriggling out after her. Derek, meanwhile, is more preoccupied with how they're going to get the equipment from the van into the house.

Jordan joins him at the back of the van and they begin pulling the cases out, the others picking up a couple things as they pass. They're anxious to see inside the monster house and Derek is big enough to admit that he's terrified to open the front doors. He wants to be as far from them as possible when they're first opened just in case they snap shut again like gnashing teeth.

"That's a lot of equipment," Jordan says, shaking his head.

"Most of the electronic stuff was delivered and installed earlier this week," Derek says. "This is just the stuff Jennifer thought of at the last minute." Jordan nods, pulling out a couple rolls of paper that have been stuck together using industrial strength rubber bands. He waves them a little to get Derek's attention.

"What are these?"

"House plans. They're probably about as useful as a fourteenth century map of Africa, but our intentions are good." Jordan hands the plans over to Liam, the little boy content to stick by them while his brother drifts closer to the house. "How are you doing, kiddo?" Liam tilts his head to the side and narrows his eyes like he's trying to see every thought whirring around inside Derek's mind.

The world lurches sideways again, a sickening tilt like when Derek used to get so drunk he was afraid he'd fall off the earth. He's nauseatingly sober now and his head spins as he falls into his younger self, a full four feet instead of five. He's standing in front of those impossible stairs and a woman in white is descending them with an unnatural grace, as though her feet aren't touching the ground.

" _Derek_ ," the woman whispers, voice louder than the others.

"What is it," Jordan asks with concern coloring his voice. "What do you hear?" There's a faint whispering like before, the voice a little different but still achingly familiar. He can't place it yet, but he'll know who it belongs to before this awful trip ends.

"It knows we're here," Derek says, feeling hot tears gather and blinking them away. "It _wants_ us here. God help us. It wants us here." He sees flashes of the attic, the scent of sawdust clogging his nose, but it's not the same as last time. He's still tethered to the real world and the two collide with a shudder before he's dropped back into his own body.

" _Houses are alive_ ," the strangely familiar voice whispers. It rises and falls, caught on some invisible wind that keeps Derek from fully recognizing it. " _This is something we know, news from our nerve endings. If we're quiet, if we listen, we can hear houses breathe. Sometimes, in the depth of the night, you hear them groan. It's as if they're having bad dreams."_

"Do you hear it, Jordan? Am I crazy?"

" _A good house cradles and comforts, a bad one fills us with instinctive unease. Bad houses hate our warmth and our human-ness. That blind hate of our humanity is what we mean when we use the word 'haunted'."_

"It's stopped," Jordan says, looking around. "I heard it, too, but it's gone now."

"What," Jennifer demands. "What did you hear?"

"There were words, but they weren't clear. Did anyone else hear it?"

"I might have heard something," Melissa says, laughing nervously. "It might've just been my imagination, though." She's clutching at a duffle bag like it's the only thing keeping her from bolting and Derek finds himself doing much the same to the coil of rope in his hand. His knuckles are white and the bones are starting to ache from his tight grip.

"But what was it," Jennifer demands again, impatient as she turns her gaze back to Derek.

"How should I know," he asks defensively. "The only psychic ability I have is knowing when you're craving pizza. You've got the test results to prove it." She'd poked and prodded him so much during the first month of their relationship that he felt more like a pin cushion than a boyfriend. Sensing eyes on him, Derek glances to the left and furrows his brows when he locks gazes with Jordan. "What?"

"Nothing," Jordan says, quiet and unthreatening. It rankles Derek, the amused tilt to Jordan's mouth makes him want to lash out like he had as a teenager. He doesn't, though, because there are too many witnesses around and another strike on his record means a prison sentence.

An awkward silence hangs between all of them, thrumming with tension like a fishing line about to snap. Jennifer clears her throat pointedly, gaining everyone's attention as she forces a smile. She's very good at smiling, she uses them like weapons.

"Erica," she says, raising her brows expectantly. "Care to follow me?" Jennifer doesn't wait for an answer, she turns on her heel and marches up to the front doors. Derek can't see them in the tunnel, but their voices carry back to him. "I want you to be the first one that touches the doors."

"Okay," Erica says.

"Jackson," Jordan calls, already digging more cases out of the van. "Why don't you come give us a hand? It seems to be the butler's day off."

"I don't recall signing on to be a porter," Jackson sneers. He wanders over all the same, wrinkling his nose at the thought of manual labor. Derek bets his hands are soft, that they haven't so much as washed a dish. Derek's own hands are rough from hard work, doing any job he could that would allow him to scrape by. If he budgets the money from selling Echo House well enough, he should be able to work fewer hours than he has been.

"I tell you what," Derek grunts, hefting a case out. "You take this up to the front door like a good little rich boy and I won't put your hand in a bowl of warm water while you sleep tonight." He slings the case at Jackson, forcing him to either catch it or be hit with it. Unfortunately, Jackson decides carrying it inside is better than bruised ribs, so he catches it deftly and shuffles out of range.

" _Come in, sir, you were expected_ ," a new voice says, echoing out of the tunnel. " _This way. Come in, sir, you were expected. This way_."

"Erica," Jennifer asks. "Are you okay?"

"This house is already starting to wake up," Derek says, the words carried out on a sigh. He'd hoped Jennifer was wrong the other night. He'd hoped the house would remain dormant and they wouldn't get any evidence that it had ever been a living thing. "Wonderful."

"How old were you when you got lost in there," Jordan asks. He's got the strap of a case digging into his shoulder and there's a sheen of sweat along his brow, but he still looks like a model with the sunlight outlining him in shimmering gold. It's not fair, no one should look this hot while doing manual labor. If Derek wasn't in a relationship, he'd climb this man like a tree.

"Wow, you don't waste any time, do you? If I knew what you were talking about, I'd give you an answer."

"You looked about nine, I'd say. Nine years old and stuck in a room with colored light. You felt as though you might choke on the smell of sawdust." A shiver races down his spine, leaving a cold sweat in its wake that makes his shirt cling to his back uncomfortably. "What happened to you in there, Derek? What did you see that made you so frightened?"

"Nothing," he says, trying to sound firm. Before Jordan can ask anything else, Derek grabs up one of the heavier cases and books it. Jennifer doesn't even glance at him as he shoulders his way to the front of the group, too focused on Erica.

"What is it," Deucalion asks, looking ready to catch Erica should she fall.

"Nothing," Erica says, voice shaky. There are tears on her cheeks as she steps back from the door, catching in the light like diamonds. She really is a beautiful woman, everyone in their group appears to have stepped out of a JC Penney catalogue. "It's just cold metal, that's all."

"But you said something," Jennifer insists.

"There was something there, but it's gone now. I didn't like the way it felt." Jennifer frowns, but says nothing else as she digs the house keys out of her purse. She flicks through them until she finds the one she wants, unlocking the heavy doors and pushing them open for all to see inside.

They move as one, small shuffles of nervous feet that bring them into the grand entryway. Stone columns support archways far above their heads, the floors made of fine wood with black marble cutting through it to make large squares, a beautiful chandelier hanging above three short steps that leads to a raised portion of the room. There's a sturdy table set up there with more equipment already set out on it, two curving staircases seeming to grow out of the floor and meet again at the second landing, and a short hall stretching on between the two. On the walls of the entryway, visible between the massive columns, are paintings of the Hale family; Corinne, Peter, Laurent, and Cora all dressed in their best clothes and smiling for a painter long since dead.

The parlor is set off to the left, part of another hall that has more doors that lead to even more rooms. The house is like a labyrinth, stretching on and on forever with no hope of reaching its center. Derek wonders if there's a minotaur loose in the basement, waiting on whatever poor sap has the bad luck to wander down there without any twine to find their way back out.

On the raised portion of the floor are marble statues in little alcoves along the walls and a grandfather clock that looks pristine, the wood dusted, and the gold-inlaid hands polished to a shine behind the glass. The group comes to a stop at the table, setting down the equipment with grunts of relief. Derek's attention drifts to the left, finding Deucalion holding up a remote for the gates.

"The caretaker must have left it here when he let in the guys that delivered the equipment," Derek explains.

"Won't he miss it," Deucalion asks.

"Come July there won't be a gate to open." At the other end of the table, Jennifer is sending him a dirty look that would have him burning if looks alone could kill. He doesn't feel guilty about it, not when it means having this monstrosity off his back.

"There's a flashlight for each of you," she says, changing the subject. "I suggest you keep it on your person at all times." Derek hands them out, pulling them from one of the cases he brought in.

"The power's fine most of the time," he explains," but it's fickle."

"I have a feeling that looking for the fuse box wouldn't help us any," Jordan quips.

"Calling BHW&P wouldn't do us much good either." Not that Beacon Hills Water Power has a record-winning response time anyway. He gets the feeling they wouldn't answer a call from this address for fear of their workers disappearing like poor Liza Albert.

"But what about the equipment," Melissa asks worriedly. "Wouldn't a power outage ruin anything you document?"

"No, everything would switch over to battery," Jennifer assures her. "I think it's time to get started."

A breeze has Derek stiffening, the cold of it licking up his nape and making him spin with an arm raised in defense. At the end of the long entryway, standing just inside the doors, the psychic wind tousles Liam's hair playfully. The doors slam shut with a resounding _crack_ that echoes through the entryway, the wind disappearing the second the task is finished. Liam's answering smile is positively wicked. There's a softer noise and then Jennifer is speaking into her tape recorder.

"Friday afternoon, 3:17 p.m. We've just experienced our first paranormal phenomenon—a phantom draft." She clicks stop on the recorder and pockets it before looking to the rest of the group. "Now, how about we start this off with a tour?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "Movies, after all, are only an illusion of motion comprised of thousands of still photographs. The imagination, however, moves with its own tidal flow."


	5. Crazy With Loneliness

"The only thing I insist on is that you don't go off exploring on your own," Jennifer says as she pushes open a pair of doors. "The geography of Echo House can seem unstable."

"We could always sleep in groups," Erica suggests. "Us girls can sleep in a room like in summer camp." The excitement is gaining ground, which is a good thing for Erica. Stiles wishes he could summon such a thing, but all he feels is claustrophobic. Liam squeezes his hand as though he senses Stiles' nerves and, he thinks, perhaps he can.

"I'll sleep with Jackson and after midnight we'll raid the fridge," Jordan jokes, draping an arm around Jackson's shoulders. Jackson gives a sarcastic smile before shrugging the arm off and moving a couple steps away.

"The bedrooms are perfectly safe," Jennifer assures the group. "I just don't want you all wandering around and getting lost. It's a big house as you well know, and groups are safer in the halls." The next doors she opens lead into the kitchen, the checkered tiles on the floor shining under the overhead lights. "I think you'll find this interesting."

"You could make Thanksgiving dinner for a hundred people in here," Melissa says.

"Maybe after the place was fumigated," Jackson remarks. Just like all the other rooms in the house, the kitchen is massive. There isn't any grime to be found, everything's been scrubbed clean until it shines. The copper pots hanging near the stove even offer a view of warped reflections. Jennifer continues forward, opening a door that connects the kitchen with the greenhouse.

"Corinne called this the 'health room'," Jennifer explains as they all file inside. Most of the plants are dead or in the process of dying, the smell of decay hanging in the air like stale perfume. "We would call it a greenhouse or solarium."

"I wouldn't want to spend much time out here," Stiles mutters. The wicker furniture has been upended at some point, the soil sprinkled over the cobblestones looking disturbed like someone had come through here before the psychics.

"I can't say I blame you. A railroad executive named George Meader, a friend and drinking buddy of Peter, died in here after the end of the first World War. According to a doctor he was stung by a bee and died of an extreme allergic reaction."

"Youch."

"As I told you a few days ago, men didn't do so hot here in Echo House's youth."

"Way to reassure the menfolk," Jordan comments.

"I'm sure you have nothing to worry about. Just don't forget the buddy system we all learned about in pre-school. If you see someone that doesn't belong, then do the stranger danger routine and we'll all come running." Stiles flinches as he passes a beehive, urging Liam away from it as a few bees crawl over the hive.

"Hey, hold on a second," Derek says, striding ahead a few feet and scooping something up off the ground. He turns with the object in hand, holding up a cell phone with the red light blinking to show a missed called. "What's this?"

"Did the caretaker leave that, too," Deucalion asks dubiously.

"I doubt it."

"We should call the last dialed number and ask them if their refrigerator's running," Jordan says, only half joking. Derek presses redial and holds the phone against his ear, the group waiting with bated breath to see who answers. After a moment, he gains an amused smile, shaking his head.

"Hello, Professor Argent," he says," this is Jennifer Blake's friend, Derek Hale. We seem to have found a piece of your property here in Echo House. Given that we saw you right before we left, I'm confident enough to say you didn't drop it yourself. However, I've got a pretty good idea of who did. I know that trespassing isn't a very serious crime and abetting a trespasser is probably even less serious, but I bet your dignity would take a huge blow if nothing else. Guess who's gonna be the cover boy for next week's newspaper? Have a nice day."

"Good to know I'm not the only asshole here," Stiles says, grinning.

"How can you be sure that that was the Professor's phone," Melissa asks.

"Who else would send someone in here," Jennifer demands. "The proof is in the contacts list if you want to take a peek. Fifty bucks says one of them is that son of a bitch, Raeken." Stiles doesn't know who this Raeken guy is, but he's willing to bet that he's a dick.

"If the reporter had the phone, then where's the reporter," Jackson asks.

"Maybe the house ate him," Erica says. "That's what it's supposed to do, right?"

"The more likely scenario is something paranormal happened and he ran off with his tail between his legs," Jennifer soothes, shrugging it off. "And if he's still sneaking around, then we'll find him before the weekend is over. Come on, group, let's—"

"Are you sure that we shouldn't notify someone?"

"Why? If he's here, then he's trespassing like Derek said. If we get the cops involved, we're apt to find ourselves with half a dozen officers stomping through the house and roiling up the atmosphere and he'll win. That pig Argent will win in spite of everything and I won't let that happen. I refuse!"

"It's okay," Derek assures her. "We're not gonna let him win." Stiles is a sore loser at the best of times and down for a fight at the worst, he'll make sure Jennifer gets her proof out of sheer spite.

"And Raeken will get a stern talking to before we throw him out on his ear," Jordan adds. The others echo the sentiment, not willing to release the hooks they're sinking in for anyone that threatens to tear it all away. Jennifer smiles in relief, the joint belief the group has in her adding some confidence.

"Care to enlighten us about the rest of the house?"

"It'd be my pleasure," she nods, still smiling. They all turn and head back the way they had come, reentering the kitchen with its two prepping tables and shining tile floors. Jennifer hops up on one of the tables, the spool of rope placed next to her and still bound tightly.

"I believe we're lingering in the kitchen because Jennifer wants to tell you about my great aunt Cora. Go ahead."

"Are you sure?"

"I never met the kid, so have at it. _Mi trauma familiar es tu trauma familiar._ " Derek grins and his cheek dimples and absolutely no one can blame Stiles if for swooning a little. Men don't look like that in Stiles' neighborhood and he's taking full advantage of the hot people buffet that Echo House is offering.

"Cora was six years old when she disappeared. Her older brother, Laurent, was away at boarding school.

"Wait," Melissa interrupts. "Laurent was already at boarding school? Wasn't he a little young?"

"He was eight. Peter held no trust for Echo House and wanted his heir far away from here despite how much Corinne protested. It was one of the few times he actually told her no about something. This—" She gestures vaguely around at the kitchen "—was the last place Cora Hale was ever seen. She was having a tea party near the pantry door over there, where she'd been most of the morning after breakfast.

"Marin was watching her as she got things ready for lunch. She stepped into the pantry for what she swore was no more than thirty seconds, just long enough to gather a few potatoes, and Cora was gone when she came out. She could hear Cora singing close by, but it was cut off by a scream that had everyone running. Fifty men searched the house and grounds. They found nothing, not even a lock of hair or a thread from her dress."

"Great Grandfather was convinced Marin had something to do with it," Derek adds. "Corinne objected in the strongest possible terms, but Peter respectfully declined to listen. Marin was taken to a small basement room and questioned for no less than fifty hours; no sleep, no food, no bathroom breaks, and no mercy. She ended up convincing them that she was innocent, but it cost her three teeth, a broken nose and a broken wrist. She was eventually allowed to return home again. Well, the only home she had left." Stiles winces and pulls Liam closer to him, tucking him against his side. If anyone tried to harm his baby brother, Stiles would make Peter Hale look like a saint.

"So, when do we get to go upstairs," Jackson asks, breaking the spell that stories always cast. "I hear that's where all the weird stuff happens." Stiles laughs at that and surprises himself with how free it sounds. He's not the laughing type, but it feels so good to be away from his father's erratic schedule and those bitches Stiles works with.

"No time like the present," Jennifer says, sliding off the table and leading the way out. The rooms have changed when they leave the kitchen behind, a staircase coated in dust and cobwebs winding up far above their heads.

"I didn't notice that one before."

"Neither did I," Jordan says, serious. "So it's begun." A flower of unease blooms in Stiles' stomach, an overwhelming sense of wrongness that makes him shrink. _It's too dark in here_ , he thinks. _There are so many windows, but it's so dark_.

"Jordan, could you tie your rope to the post there," Jennifer calls from the front of the group. "If nothing else, it'll help us come back the way we came when we're done upstairs." He nods and secures it without a comment, pulling on it to make sure it will hold.

"Can't we just bring the plans with us," Melissa asks.

"You can't trust the plans in a house like this," Derek explains.

"And it's only a safety measure," Jennifer continues. "So follow me and prepare to be amazed." Much like the rest of the house, the stairs seem to go on forever, forming a perfect square if you look down from the top. The wood panels turn to rough brick and the opulence dims as they leave behind the part of the house guests would be exposed to.

Waiting for them at the very top is a simple door that opens out onto a not-so-simple hallway. The archways are crafted to be small, meant to look as though they're far off when you're actually likely to whack your head off of one within the first few feet. The doors are also small and refuse to open, the whole illusion making Stiles nauseous.

"Corinne called this the Perspective Hallway." The way Jennifer talks makes Stiles think of a tour guide; _and if you look to your right, you'll see Alvin and the Chipmunks hijacking a tour bus_. "It was her first major addition that an architect didn't design."

"She made it up herself," Melissa guesses, smiling. "Way to go, Corinne."

"Actually, it was Marin."

"Her maid," Jackson asks, sounding doubtful.

"Her _companion_." Erica moves ahead of the group, trying the child-sized doorknobs of the equally small doors, moving from one side of the hall to the other with the hope that one will open to reveal something magical.

"It's so wild," she says with a bright grin. "It's like something in a fun house." She's careful to avoid bumping her head, moving back to the right side of the hall and jiggling another knob. The group pauses to watch, Stiles taking in the family crest carved into the archways. It's stained a dark red, just a touch darker than the velvet papering the walls, smooth beneath his fingertips.

"Great Gram had the real doors camouflaged," Derek explains. "She didn't want them to spoil the illusion." He steps up beside Erica and presses on a wall panel, the section swinging inward to reveal a small bedroom. "Raeken! Hey, Raeken, are you in there?" As if the house is answering, a gust of wind comes screaming out, blowing clothes and hair back with a force that's almost enough to steal the breath out of Stiles' lungs.

"No," Liam yells. He marches straight up to the doorway despite how Stiles tries to pull him back, stamping his foot. "You stop that! Use your inside voice!" The door slams shut with a _bang_ that sets Stiles' head to throbbing.

"Well, I'd say you've been successful in waking this place up," Jordan says into the sudden quiet.

"Is he always so assertive," Derek asks, turning to look at Stiles. The others are talking, but Derek is focused solely on Stiles and Stiles is proud of himself when he remains upright. Derek's smiling again and Stiles realizes with a start that he's waiting on him to talk.

"Uh, it just depends on who he's talking to," Stiles says, shrugging. "He's usually shy around strangers, but get him alone and he'll never shut up." _You're rambling, Stiles_. Is this what Cady meant when she was talking about word vomit? 'Cause Stiles has got a bad case of it. "He has a pretty bad temper, too—"

"Mischief, you're talking really fast," Liam says, coming to stand next to him again. He trains his big blue eyes on Derek and the man melts a little. No one can stand up to Liam's puppy eyes, not even their father. "That means he thinks you're hot."

"I will sit on you, Lee." His brows furrow as he looks up at Stiles, head cocked to the side. "Don't tempt me." Derek's still smiling and Stiles does his best to avoid looking at that damn dimple.

"Wanna know a secret," Derek asks in a dramatic whisper. Liam nods, greedy for any and all secrets. The kid seeks them out like a normal kid seeks out candy. "I think your brother's pretty hot, too." His nose scrunches and he grabs Stiles' hand, yanking the older man after him and away from Derek. He loves secrets, but he also believes people have cooties.

"Marin was the first person to hear Echo House scream shortly after Cora disappeared," Jennifer's saying as she leads them farther down the hallway. "In the mid 60's, a team of scientists spent time investigating Echo House and heard the house scream several times. They managed to record a couple of them, though they don't sound half as impressive on tape."

"What conclusion did they come to," Jordan asks.

"That they were hearing the sound of underground water that was amplified by the old water pipes that run under this part of Beacon Hills."

"Underground water," Deucalion checks dubiously.

"When faced with this sort of phenomenon, people tend to protect their belief systems ferociously." Jennifer comes to a stop halfway down the hall, running her fingers over an archway as she turns to face the group. "The hallway we're standing in right now is the last place Corinne Hale was ever seen.

"Peter and Corinne moved in on January fifteenth in 1909 when Corinne was just barely in her twenties. She marked the occasion by wearing the same white dress she had on the day they arrived. For many of those years Corinne threw a party on January fifteenth and everybody who was anybody showed up, from politicians to movie stars. When the actress disappeared, the parties stopped."

"Finish telling us about old Mrs. Hale," Melissa urges, following Jennifer's lead.

"She disappeared on January fifteenth in 1950 at seventy years old. A maid saw her and wished her good evening and she swept by as though she didn't even hear her. And that was the last anyone ever saw of her." Jennifer lets the dramatic pause swell and breaks it with a smile. "Come on. There's lots more to see and the day is young."

"Jackson," Jordan murmurs, holding up the tail-end of his rope. "I think it's time we joined forces." Jackson nods, tying Jordan's rope with his own and looping it around a light fixture. The fact that they need rope at all is disconcerting. It's like leaving a trail of breadcrumbs and hoping birds don't eat them.

"The room we're about to enter is the gymnasium," Jennifer says at the lead. "Although the exercise equipment is out of date…." She trails off as they enter the new room, the overhead chandelier revealing a glass floor, domed ceiling, and bookcase after bookcase built into the walls. Liam lets out a choked whimper, turning and tugging on Stiles' sleeve until he picks Liam up.

"This room demands a particular form of exercise," Deucalion says dryly.

"How on earth…?"

"It's the Mirror Library," Derek says as they shuffle inside. Like the Prospective Hallway, the Mirror Library is disorienting at first. The glass floor reflects the ceiling above, all the wood supports that curve to keep small glass panels in place. There's a fireplace and chairs on the left, the mantle decorated with two candelabras on either side of a small clock. "This room isn't in the plans, but I remember seeing it as a boy. I was afraid to go in because I thought I'd fall right through the floor."

"How can it not be in the plans," Jackson asks.

"It's not in the plans because Corinne didn't want them to be. She was already dead when this was installed as part of her will, which means Peter was already dead and couldn't protest it."

"Look," Melissa says," someone left their camera." She hurries over to it, shifting it around until she sees something that makes her gasp. She hands it off to Jordan when she comes back to the group.

"Well, that's certainly not good," he says, holding it up for the others to see. "According to the writing here, this belonged to our dearly missing Theo Raeken." Stiles makes a face and glances around despite the fact that there's literally nowhere for someone to hide. Even the inside of the fireplace is reflected, a small pile of ashes the only thing to be found.

"Mister Raeken," Erica calls out. "Mister Raeken, are you here?" Just like before when someone called his name, the house answers. Instead of wind strong enough to knock you off your feet, the lights in the room extinguish all at once, leaving everyone to fumble with their flashlights until they have them on.

"Nobody panic," Jennifer commands gently. "We all knew this could happen. Just keep your flashlights on and everything will be fine."

"Maybe we should go back downstairs," Derek suggests.

"That's nonsense. Wait, what's that?" Five yellow beams of light land on a pale mist seeping out of the floor, the flashlights surprisingly steady given the situation. The mist grows as it floats upwards, swirling around the translucent form of a little girl that drifts a few inches off the ground.

" _Liam_ ," the spirit calls, one hand outstretched. Liam shifts in Stiles' arms, but his fingers dig into Stiles' shoulders painfully like it's taking all his strength not to reach for the ghost. _"Liam, come home. Come with me."_ Beside them, Derek fumbles with a camcorder, not wanting to take his eyes off the spirit but needing to catch it on tape.

"Don't even think about it," Stiles hisses as Liam tenses. He's starting to struggle now, wanting down so he can go to the spirit. Stiles tightens his hold even more, knowing he'll probably leave bruises and not caring because at least Liam will still be with him.

It's sudden and quick flashes of light that sends Cora screaming back into this house's maze, the overhead lights flickering back on. Liam sags against Stiles, his muscles jumping before going still.

"How did you know to do that," Jordan asks. Stiles turns to glance at Melissa, finding that the older woman had snatched the camera back at some point. The flashes must have been from her taking picture after picture, scaring the ghost away.

"I don't know," she shrugs. "I just did. Someone take this, I-I don't want it." She tries to hand it off to Jordan but Erica holds out her hands eagerly.

"Here, I'll take it," she says. Melissa hands it off without any sort of fuss, content to watch Erica's reaction. A crease appears between Erica's brows, her mouth twisting into something sour before smoothing again. The words that come out belong to a man instead of Erica. " _Try to get some pictures, good pictures. Pictures of them being psychic_."

"What's that supposed to mean," Jackson questions.

"Maybe someone talking to Raeken?" Erica's back to herself now, frowning down at the camera.

"Is he alive," Derek asks. "Can you tell?"

"He was when he dropped this camera, but I can't be sure what happened to him after that."

"I'm gonna bring up my earlier suggestion of heading back downstairs. Maybe this time someone will actually listen, and we can take some time to wonder why all the rooms up here are so angry. Even better, we can pretend they're _not_ angry and none of this happened. Who's with me?"

"Easy, you drama king," Jennifer teases. "Let's go take a lunch break and pick back up later."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mi trauma familiar es tu trauma familiar = My family trauma is your family trauma.
> 
> Full chapter title quote: "If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness."


	6. The Divine Message

The hall is different when they come back out; flower vases where there shouldn't have been, faded wallpaper instead of dark wood, end tables where there had been empty space. The only thing that isn't different is the line of their rope that disappears around a corner.

"Wait," Deucalion calls out, rushing to the front," the hallway's changed."

"Nonsense," Jennifer starts, but she's cut off by Erica.

"He's right," she says. "This isn't the hall we came down." Derek thinks of a dusty attic and colored glass, his stomach doing a flip that almost has his meagre breakfast making a reappearance. He hates this house and he hates his great grandmother for pouring her dark soul into the woodwork. Fuck her and fuck Peter and fuck Jennifer for dragging them all here.

"Does anyone else hear that banging or am I going nuts," Melissa asks. Derek pauses and leans heavily against the wall, his eyes squeezed shut. He'd hoped he'd been imagining the sound of hammers, had hoped it was just his pulse in his ears, but Melissa's question makes it real.

"Derek, what's going on," Jennifer asks. She catches him by his sleeve when he sways, brows creased with concern.

"The building has started again," he says, barely loud enough for the others to hear. "You wanted to wake the place up and you got your wish." It's Derek's nightmare, the sound of hammers pounding wood into shape means that Corinne's not far behind it.

" _Build with us, Der_ ," whispers the voice from a buried memory. It's a voice that belongs in a room filled with sawdust and jagged glass, a voice that makes his legs go weak because it never precedes good things.

"But who's building," Jordan asks," and what?"

"I don't know."

"You're lying." Derek shakes his head on instinct despite the fear blooming in his breast, a deep fear that can turn to panic at any time. "Can you actually not remember or does it scare you to?" Derek locks gazes with him again and wonders what exactly he sees behind Derek's eyes. There's nothing hard or cruel to be found in the lines of Jordan's face.

"It's gone," Stiles says, voice soft. "Whatever it was, it's stopped." The sudden absence of hammering does little to soothe Derek's jagged nerves. That doesn't mean that Corinne's given up hope on Derek joining the family business of undead carpenters, it just means her battery isn't fully charged.

"Then I suggest we go downstairs before it starts up again." Derek is all for that, leading the way down the new hall and around the corner. He comes to a standstill so suddenly that Jennifer crashes into his back, almost making both of them topple to the floor. At the end of the hall, where there should be a clear path, is a dead end. It isn't possible, not in the logical sense, the rope leads right up to and then disappears into the wall, taunt where Jackson is tugging on it.

Jordan continues ahead of them, pressing his hands against the wall on either side of the rope and hunching his shoulders. Derek can't see too well from where he's standing and there's a shadow that pools over Jordan's face, but he knows concentration when he sees it. The hunched shoulders and pressing hands are exactly how he'd taken on his algebra homework back in high school.

"Liam," Jordan says after a moment. "Do you think I could borrow you? I need some help with this." Liam looks up to his brother and then skips forward when Stiles nods his permission. "Put your hand here and push using your ability." Jordan situates Liam the way he needs, both of them focusing on the dead end. Derek can almost sense it, the sizzling of grease in a pan.

The entire house seems to shake on its foundations, the rumbling noise like a boulder rolling through the halls. Liam puts his free hand on the wall so he can push with both, the shadows playing tricks so that the boy's eyes almost look black for an instant.

"Jordan," Jennifer starts, voice curt with warning.

"Not now, Jennifer," he advises. His voice is still soft, careful not to startle Liam. It comes as a surprise when the wall suddenly shoots backwards, the lights going out and then flickering back on as they had in the library. A new hall stretches before them, the end of it hidden in darkness. Liam giggles, turning to face his brother and give him a thumbs-up.

"Don't get cocky," Stiles says, unimpressed. Derek gets the feeling that this isn't the first time Liam's done something incredible.

"You're just jealous," Liam says, sing-song. Stiles can't quite bite back his smile and Derek finds himself wanting to see what he looks like outside of a haunted house. Maybe after Jennifer dumps his ass he can ask her for Stiles' number.

"I think we've all had enough excitement for one day," Jennifer says, breathless. She likes watching Liam work like that, seeing all the potential wrapped up and held inside one little kid's mind. "I know another way down from here and there might even be something worth seeing along the way."

"Are you sure you know the way," Jordan teases.

" _Yes_." Jordan smiles, ruffling Liam's hair before they all start to follow Jennifer down the new hall. Derek finds himself hanging back so he can walk with Stiles, studying him in the spotty lighting. His hair is straight as a pin, a dark brown that follows the curve of his ears and grows a little longer on top, his eyes a vibrant brown like fresh coffee, his cheekbones handcrafted by God or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. His lips struggle not to form a smile as he watches his brother, the love obvious to anyone who takes the time to look.

"Do I have something on my face," he asks, bringing a hand up to his cheek.

"No," Derek says.

"Then what are you looking at? You're gonna run into a wall if you don't pay attention to where you're going." The smile he gives Derek is tentative, an unconfident thing that tells him he spends so much time taking care of his brother that he doesn't date often. It's cute.

"I'm sure you'll keep that from happening. You wouldn't want anything happening to my face since you think it's so hot." Stiles groans and blushes which just makes him cuter.

"I'm gonna sit on that kid, I swear to God."

"My cousin used to sit on me when I got on his nerves, you know. It was the worst thing ever 'cause he was so much bigger than me. I got back at him by putting honey in his pillowcase." Stiles snorts and then sobers, straining his neck to make sure his brother is still chattering with Jordan rather than listening to them.

"If I find honey in my pillowcase, I'll get you." He pokes Derek's chest, but he's fighting back another smile. Derek laughs, catching his hand and pressing a kiss to the back of it like a gentleman out of one of the period dramas Talia had loved. Stiles' blush deepens, but he doesn't look away.

"I would never put honey in your pillowcase." Stiles looks like he's got a new threat dancing on the tip of his tongue, but then he freezes and his jaw goes slack. "What?" Derek looks around, noticing for the first time that they've ended up in Corinne's joke room. Everything is topsy-turvy, the ceiling made up of green and white tiles with desks and chairs stuck to it while the floor is plain white plaster with the light fixtures sticking straight up. It's actually pretty dope if he's being honest.

"Should we look forward to more camouflaged doors, Derek," Jordan asks as they come into the room.

"Great Gram was never above using a good trick twice. This was her little joke on her husband's business life."

"Did he get it," Stiles asks.

"I doubt it. Even I don't understand it, but it's amusing at any rate." He moves past the others to the filing cabinet, opening a drawer and laughing when three crayons fall out at his feet. Jennifer clears her throat and raises her brows, but Derek refuses to be cowed. Not even his mother could make him act his age when he set his mind to being an ass. "The real door's over here if you wanna do the honors." He points at a wood panel with fake windows making up the bottom of it, watching as Deucalion pushes it open.

Beyond the panel is another bedroom, wood-paneled and boasting a huge four-poster bed. The sheets on it are moth-eaten and motes of dust fly up when Deucalion kicks one of the posts. Derek's the last one inside, following the others through the room and back out into another hallway.

"This house seems to have everything except food," Jackson complains. Derek doesn't say anything, his gaze fixed on the carpet that pads the new hallway. It's dark green with animals hidden amongst the threaded foliage; lions and tigers and bears, oh my. _Unmask, unmask_ , he thinks and bites his lip to keep a laugh at bay.

"Do you ever stop complaining," Melissa asks, brows arched. She looks like annoyed mothers everywhere and part of Derek is already starting to love her. He remembers how compassionate she'd been after the fire, how she'd wrapped him up in a hug and rocked him as he cried.

"When I sleep."

"I bet you talk in your sleep," Deucalion says, eying Jackson. Deucalion is around Melissa's age, but he's a hard man that's done hard work in his time. Deucalion Blackwood's edges aren't very soft, but he's not the type to lash out either. Derek had peeked at his file one evening when Jennifer was in the shower, so he knew Deucalion had been the supervisor of a boys' home before he retired with a pair of twins he'd adopted. Derek bets Deucalion could knock Jackson's block off with one open-handed smack.

"I do not." Jackson sniffs, a prim little sound that's better suited to little girls rather than grown men. "Talking in your sleep is undignified." Derek huffs a laugh as they head down to the first level again, making his way to the front when he notices Jennifer about to take a wrong turn. He catches her arm, waiting until she looks at him to talk.

"Billiards room is this way," he says, gesturing with his chin. She hums softly and nods, letting him lead the way this time. The billiards room isn't one of the largest in the house, but it is the warmest. There's a pool table at one end, several armchairs and a sofa, and an entire wall dedicated to black and white photographs of celebrities that have visited Echo House at some point. Set on one of the tables is an ice chest, the contents being sandwich stuff and cold drinks.

Everyone lines up to fix their plate, then all but Jackson and Jennifer pull the chairs and sofa around the lone coffee table in the room. The sense of togetherness makes Derek think of puppies, that instinctual need to cuddle when in an unfamiliar environment.

"Better, Jackson," Jennifer asks. She's standing near the wall of photographs, a bunch of grapes in one hand. Jackson, sitting not too far from her, is picking at his sandwich like it might be poisoned.

"Better than nothing, I guess," he says grumpily. "There's too much mayo in the crabmeat." Derek rolls his eyes and takes a huge bite out of his sandwich. Sure, it's nothing to write home about, but it's better than starving.

"What do you want, big boy," Jordan teases. "Bare-breasted nymphs to kneel at your feet and offer you delicacies from silver platters?"

"I'm not in the mood to deal with your so-called humor."

"Don't be such a baby," Liam says around a mouthful. "What's that you tell Daddy all the time, Mischief? Oh yeah. It's a joke, not a dick, don't take it so hard." Erica chokes on a grape and everyone in the room seems shocked to hear such language from a kid Liam's age. Stiles, on the other hand, gives him a knuckle bump.

"Damn straight, Lee," he agrees. "Don't say that at home until you're older, though, or Dad will bury us in the woods." Liam nods as though every word that comes out of his brother's mouth is gospel.

"Well, I might be able to provide better food in a little while," Jennifer says, winking at Liam. He blushes and slumps down on the couch, his sandwich forgotten. He's eight years old and all eight year olds know that girls have cooties.

"Before Liam gives us any more words of wisdom, how about you tell us about the actress," Melissa proposes, turning in her seat to look up at Jennifer. "I've always been a sucker for celebrities."

"That's her on Corinne's wall of fame." Jennifer points to one of the photographs, this one showing a beautiful woman with strawberry-blonde hair that frames an oval-shaped face. "Lydia Martin was a fairly big star in the forties. She mainly did musical comedies, but she could dance and sing a little. Most importantly for actresses in Hollywood, she was sexy as hell. She was one of Corinne's favorite guests at her January fifteenth parties."

"I sense a disaster lurking," Stiles says, smirking.

"In 1946 she showed up in what Hedda Hopper called 'the cocktail dress'. It was what she was wearing when she disappeared. She spent most of the night wowing the guests in this very room. The only thing she left behind was a single earring that a maid found the next day. Lydia's disappearance made Echo House's reputation."

"She doesn't look so sexy now," Jackson says, still picking at his food. "I saw her and Derek's great aunt the night we met at the university." He doesn't add anything else or offer a description, but the haunted light in his eyes tells them all that Lydia Martin must have looked like a creature from the grave.

"Liam, if you're finished eating, I'd like to show you something." Liam glances up from his empty plate, still snuggled against Stiles' side like he belongs there. "It's nice, I think you'll like it."

"It's okay," Stiles says, patting his leg. "Go ahead and I'll be right behind you." Liam hands Melissa his plate and stands up, taking Jennifer's hand after a moment of hesitation. He lets himself be guided over to a short set of stairs that lead up to a small platform. It looks like a miniature balcony, only overlooking the room instead of some beautiful garden.

"Go on up and see what you find."

"It's not dangerous, is it?"

"No, not a bit." The others are slowly gathering behind the pair, but none of them follow Liam up the stairs. Frankly, Derek's legs are so tired that he doesn't think he can make it up those stairs if he wanted to.

"Liam," Jordan murmurs. He mimes pressing his hands against a wall when Liam glances his way, then gives him a thumbs-up. Liam seems to understand, pressing against the square panels until one of them pops backwards and slides down to reveal a peephole. Derek can't see anything fascinating from where he's standing, but he'd discovered this trick when he was around Liam's age.

"What in the world is it," Melissa asks.

"It's a dollhouse," Derek answers.

After lunch is over, everyone goes back to the second floor to look for bedrooms for the night. Jennifer insists that their rooms are all close together, but it's up for grabs other than that. Derek and Jennifer's room is beyond fancy, probably the one Corinne and Peter had occupied when they'd lived here. The walls are papered with a wine-dark silk, the wood trim a rich color that blends with the floors. The sitting room has two armchairs at an angle to view the mantle with a fainting couch between them and a coffee table in front of it. This is a room meant to be comfortable, a sacred space for only the two of them to share after a long day spent schmoozing with California society.

Beyond the sitting room is the bedroom with its four-poster and a pair of windows that look out on what had once been a magnificent garden. The garden is choked with weeds now and the reflecting pool with its statue of Corinne is about as welcoming as a brick to the face. Derek pulls the drapes closed, the only light now coming from the miniature chandelier hanging overhead.

"Isn't it gorgeous," Jennifer asks, gazing around in wide-eyed wonder. "It's exactly like I pictured their room." Derek shuffles farther into the room, leaving a streak of mud on the large rug that covers the floor. He checks under the bed and then in the wardrobe before letting their bags drop to the floor. "What are you doing?"

"Checking to make sure Elvis isn't rooming with us." Jennifer's snort of laughter is the genuine article, a rare thing considering how strained the relationship's been. It makes Derek smile, too. "Doesn't this place freak you out a little bit? When we got stuck in that hallway with all that hammering, I thought we were toast."

"That's because you're chicken, dear." He clucks and folds his arms into a pair of wings, but Jennifer only gives him a fond smile. She's all laughed out, it seems. "I don't know about you, but I could use a long bath and a nap before I face the others again. I'm exhausted."

"Not sleeping will do that to you." He doesn't mean it to come out so bitter and he regrets it immediately when Jennifer flinches as though he's just slapped her. He doesn't take the words back, though. They're out in the world and it's up to Jennifer to either face their issues or pretend they're like every other couple.

"I think I'll take that bath," she murmurs after a long while. Derek isn't sure if he wanted to fight or not, but he's disappointed all the same. He kicks off his shoes and flops onto the bed, only half-surprised when he's not smothered by a cloud of dust. Somehow he knows that his great gram would rather die than have a filthy bedroom. "Derek…." He glances away from the canopy, finding Jennifer standing in the doorway of the bathroom. She's got one foot in each room, stuck in limbo.

"Go take your bath." She bites her lip like she's not sure what to do, then she's ducking her head and shutting the bathroom door behind her. A moment later, Derek can hear water gushing out of old pipes into a porcelain tub. He wonders if it's a clawfoot tub, one of those fancy ones you see at Lowes and decide you absolutely have to have someday. A bathtub that you can lie in without bending your knees is the height of luxury.

" _Dear fellow traveler under the moon._ " Jennifer's voice is muffled by the water, but it reaches him all the same. _"I saw you standing in the shadows and your eyes were blue. You put your hand out…."_ Derek allows his eyes to close, fingers moving over the soft comforter beneath him.

The song follows him down into his dream, the voice changing to suit another woman. He's eight years old again as he follows the voice through an endless series of hallways, the overhead lights dimming and brightening with the faint hum of electricity, pulsing like a heartbeat. Between the singing and the humming lights, he feels disconnected from himself, like he's spectating his own life.

" _Come with me, boy, I want to show you something more…."_ He finds the woman at the top of a staircase, the stairs below them curving into a gentle spiral until they reach the floor. The woman smiles down at him and it's a predatory thing devoid of comfort, a lioness approaching an injured gazelle.

"Are you real," Derek asks in a voice choked with fear. The woman stands and looms over him, her brown hair almost seeming to darken as the lights start to go out. _Pop, pop, pop_ the lights go, glass raining down over them as the bulbs burst. He can still see the woman, though, a coldly beautiful creature that shouldn't be alive.

 _"I'm so glad you came back to me, Der,"_ she says, reaching out for him. Panic spears through his chest and he takes an unsteady step back, his heel hanging over thin air. He can't let this woman touch him. If she touches him, he's as good as dead. _"It's time to build. It's your destiny."_ Derek tries to take another step backwards and suddenly the stairs are gone. He's falling through a thick blackness that seems to cling to him, sucking him down like quicksand in those old cartoons. He struggles viciously, clawing and biting despite the acrid taste that floods his mouth, kicking his way to the surface.

There's another little boy waiting at the edge of the goo, gesturing wildly for Derek to join him in safety. Derek swims like his mother had taught him, barely able to keep his head above the blackness. There's something swimming below him, the Creature reaching for Julie Adams in her white bathing suit. He gives another hard kick and then he's on dry land again, the black goo sizzling and falling off him.

"You'll be safe here," the boy tells him, chin propped up on his knees. "The bad lady can't leave her illusions." Derek frowns because he recognizes this boy, but he can't quite place him in this dream world. "Did you hear her singing before?"

"Yeah," Derek nods. "She was on the impossible stairs." But that's not quite right either. The staircase he found her on spiraled down into nothingness, but the impossible stairs went in a jagged curve up to a tower that doesn't exist. There had been no sawdust on the spiraling stairs. "No, she was…."

"She's building." The boy turns to look at Derek, his frown making Derek's heart fracture. This little boy shouldn't know anything about being sad, he should be out in the sunshine and smiling. The boy reaches out, pressing two cold fingers against Derek's forehead. "It's time to wake up now, Derek. We don't die here."

Derek shoots upright on the bed, forehead tingling as he looks around him. The bedroom is still empty, the sound of gently sloshing water drawing his gaze to the bathroom door. He takes a few deep breaths, shaking the dream off and glad that the smell of sawdust hasn't followed him out this time. He runs his fingers through his hair as he stands, then freezes halfway through the motion. There's traces of black on his fingers, tacky ink that sizzles when he holds it up to the light.

In the bathroom, Jennifer continues to sing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "You'll find that God often chooses to speak through the dying and the insane. A healthy person might be apt to filter the divine message, to alter it with his or her own personality. In other words, a healthy person might make a shitty prophet."


	7. Dreams Condensed Out of Thin Air

Erica is half-asleep in a chair in the billiards room, eyelids drooping as she watches the others mill around. Melissa and Deucalion have taken over the loveseat, their voices soft as they compare notes on raising teenagers; Jennifer is fiddling with some equipment that looks like it costs more than Erica's car, Jordan's running his fingers over a suit of armor that's been polished well enough that he can see his reflection in it.

Jackson comes down after a while, drifting over to the organ and beginning to play a mournful lullaby. Erica doesn't recognize the tune, but it reminds her of old cathedrals and cold statues. She doesn't like those thoughts, distant things that feel too close to truth in a place like Echo House. This whole house is built like a cathedral with its ceilings high above their heads and carefully laid brickwork, only this cathedral is for dark things with sharp teeth.

"Jackson," Jordan calls," are you thinking of dressing for dinner?" The organ goes quiet and Erica is thankful. She and Jordan share a secret look, heat flooding her belly like she's a teenager with a crush. Jackson stands and walks away from the organ, still in the suit that reminds Erica of lemonade. There are dirty streaks on the arms of it and a dead leaf is clinging to his lapel, but she's not going to be the one to tell him.

"You tell me," he says sarcastically. "Read my mind." Jordan gives a soft huff of laughter and moves on to a painting. Erica had studied it earlier, had run her fingers over the faint cracks that have spread over the canvas. It's the Hale family before little Cora disappeared, all stoic faces as they posed for an artist. Erica could hear the ringing of laughter when she'd touched it and it had made her smile.

"Hey, Lee, I found some records," Stiles says. He's sitting on the floor near the fireplace, shuffling through the dusty records and sneaking peeks at Derek's ass as he stokes the fire. Whenever he glances away, Derek looks over at him like he hangs the moon. Liam sprints over to the old phonograph from across the room, more interested now in the shining horn than the book he'd brought with him.

"That doesn't work," Jennifer says as he passes by. "I tried it while I was setting up. Sorry, Liam." The siblings pay her no mind and there's a content smile curling Liam's lips upwards, making his eyes shine in excitement. The doorbell rings a second later, everyone standing as Jennifer heads to the door that leads into the entrance hall.

"Jennifer," Deucalion starts, but she waves him off.

"It's alright." All but Liam trail after her to the front doors, afraid of what might happen if they stay separated for too long. Erica reaches out for Melissa's hand when the front door refuses to open, but then Derek's trying the other door and she feels foolish as it swings open easily. The man waiting on the other side is middle-aged with shaggy brown hair and square-rimmed glasses, dressed in a red windbreaker and holding two pizza boxes with soda cans balanced on top.

"Got three loaded for Blake," he recites boredly. "Large, with two six-packs of soda." Jennifer has a smug expression when she passes the food and drinks off to Jackson.

"I told you there'd be something better for dinner." Jackson is trying his best to look unimpressed, but even rich snobs can't turn down greasy pizza. He's just about to say something when Glenn Miller echoes through the halls, clear and bright like a summer morning. Liam joins them in the hallway a moment later, a smug grin revealing white teeth.

"Miss Reyes," Deucalion starts, holding out a hand. "May I have this dance?"

"You got it," she nods. It's a little awkward at first, but then they're in the zone and moving across the floor with a grace Erica's usually lacking. The sound of laughter mingles with In the Mood, creating a warmth this house hasn't possessed in an age.

Erica's laughter bubbles out of her and Deucalion's is like the melody of an old jewelry box, light and wonderful. Beyond and above the others, Liam and Derek are dancing across thin air, twirling and grinning like a pair of goofballs. Soon the other couples are joining them until only Jennifer and Jackson remain on the ground, watching it all with fond smiles. It's like flying without the airsickness, soaring across the room without a care in the world.

They all dance for two more songs before slowly lowering back to the floor, a fine sweat and sore muscles urging even the most limber of the adults into the billiards room to rest and eat. Deucalion disappears as Jennifer hands out the sodas, Erica able to glimpse the small amber bottle he pulls out of his coat pocket. She's too tired to take much notice, waiting in line behind Jackson to get her pizza. He takes two slices of it and a huge bite that seems to even out his poor temperament. Maybe he's just hungry all the time and that's why he's such an asshole.

"I'm really worried about Mister Raeken," Erica says, trying to make conversation. No one else has been very pleasant to Jackson and Erica has to at least make an attempt at being friendly. Her mother always said to kill with kindness, so she might as well put it to the test.

"Don't worry," Jackson shrugs. "He'll show up eventually."

"I wish I could be as sure of that as you seem to be," Stiles says, curled up on the loveseat with Liam beside him. The poor kid is sound asleep, his head in Stiles' lap and his legs hooked over the loveseat's arm. "Where'd Duke go?"

"I'm here," Deucalion says, coming back into the room. He's jittery, as though he's about to vibrate out of his own skin like he had been that night at the bar. She doesn't have to touch him to know this is all the effect of those little white pills he takes. "Did I miss anything?"

"Erica's worried about that Raeken guy and Lee is snoring, so not much." Deucalion spares a smile as he glances down at Liam, this one softening all his hard edges. He's got a soft spot for kids.

"I think it's time for a story," Jordan announces. He's in an armchair catty-corner to Erica's, Deucalion and Melissa take up spots on either side of Jackson, while Jennifer and Derek remain standing. "We've heard about the actress, so why don't you enthrall us with the tale about Mister Posey?"

"Remember that séance I told you about," Jennifer checks.

"Starring the famous gypsy psychic, Kira Yukimura?"

"The very same. That was 1914 and the war in Europe was heating up the American economy. Alpha Oil was in clover, the money was rolling in, and Peter Hale was tired of sharing it. In October that same year he gave Douglas Posey the bum's rush."

"According to family legend, Uncle Posey had a taste for cowboys," Derek adds.

"He liked chaps in chaps," Jordan asks in amusement. "Was he into roping or branding?" Erica bites her lip to keep from laughing and Stiles is doing much the same thing. They all still feel giggly, riding the high from all the dancing.

"Probably a little bit of both."

"Peter bought him out at distress sale prices," Jennifer continues seamlessly. "He was told never to come back to Echo House, but he did once in 1915. Peter was in Europe and Corinne was home with the kids. He snuck inside through the West Wing that was being constructed and was already half up the ladder when the kids came running in."

"He hanged himself in here," Erica blurts, startled. She can see a pair of expensive cowboy boots swinging behind Jennifer's head, a rope creaking somewhere above that. She's not brave enough to look at the dead man's face.

"He did. Laurent and Cora were playing a rousing game of tag that ended in this room. Douglas planned it that way, I think. At any rate, he didn't waste any time in getting the job done."

"Grampy never forgot Posey tossing him that Tom Mix hat," Derek murmurs, lost in some memory or another. Erica wonders if it's his own or one the house is showing him. "He wanted to keep it and he threw a tantrum when his mother tried to take it away. He used to tell us kids that he believed the hat was tucked away in the attic. And the rose, he never forgot Cora catching the rose."

"Why did he wait a year to do it," Stiles asks, pizza forgotten. "And why would he do it here?"

"If you wanted answers, then you came to the wrong place."

"Following the suicide," Jennifer picks back up," Peter and Corinne kept Laurent out of Echo House as much as possible. As I said earlier, he was away at boarding school when his sister disappeared."

"Peter knew damn well that something was very wrong here," Erica says emphatically. She can feel it in her bones, a festering knowledge that refuses to leave.

"The male descendants of the Hale line have mostly stayed clear of the family manse," Derek continues. "I wasn't here more than half a dozen times as a kid. I got off on my own just once when I was eight."

"I thought your father—"

"My father hated this place," Derek says, cutting off Jennifer. "It was my mother that brought me here. I forgot until today, I think I blocked it out. Jordan's the one that reminded me."

"What was she looking for," Stiles asks.

"Antiques or loot. She was drunk again, I remember that clearly enough. She was drunk a lot back then. I know we were all broke. After we lost the oil company, broke-itis became a family disease."

"While your mother was treasure hunting, you got lost," Jordan states matter-of-factly. "You were upstairs before you realized how lost you were. One floor above the Mirror Library. Or was it three floors? Or ten? Because when this place gets going, when it feels lively and has energy to draw on, Echo House can make itself as big as it wants. Isn't that right? Finally, you got to the top and that's where—" But they never get to find out what Jordan is about to say as the doors to the billiards room slam shut with a _bang_. The entire house seems to shake like it's trying to tear itself from its foundation. Sparks fly from the light fixtures, even the ones that aren't on, and Erica jumps out of her seat.

"What is it," Jennifer yells over the noise. "Does anyone know?"

"It's a cluster manifestation with rising elements, like an earthquake!"

"It's the house," Melissa accuses," it's coming alive!" Erica wants to cry, she can taste the tears at the back of her throat, but that festering knowledge overtakes it. She barely notices the sparks singing her shirt and the backs of her legs, brown eyes zeroing in on a dark shape lingering near the closed doors.

She takes a step forward and the shadow takes one step back, pressing itself against the wall. No, not _against_ it, _into_ it. The wall seems to absorb the shape and Erica wants to drag it out into the open, make it take responsibility. She's just about to stalk over to it and do just that when a bulb explodes and sharp pieces of glass dig into her arm. Erica shouts and lurches sideways, falling across Jordan's lap and cowering there. She wants to take charge, but she _hurts_.

"How many are there," Jennifer demands, barely heard over the ruckus.

There's a bright flash of light and then the flames dancing in the mantle come flying out in the shape of a distorted, monstrous face. The force of them sends Jackson falling backwards against the floor at Erica's feet. The flames die down after that and the house seems to calm, a child taking a breath after a vicious tantrum.

A toy carriage comes to rest in the spot Jackson had occupied a moment ago, propelled by invisible hands. Things are piled inside it, children's toys that draw Liam forward like a moth to a flame. They all watch with baited breath as he reaches out one small hand, coming away with a tin of dominoes.

Dear Fellow Traveler starts up on the phonograph, a background noise as all eyes turn to the glowing smoke that floats up out of the floor. Much like in the library, the smoke reveals itself to be Cora as she floats several inches above the ground. Her voice is thin, rising and lowering on some invisible wind as she calls for Liam to join her. Erica is frozen in place as she watches Liam start forward, Jennifer following after him and encouraging him to take Cora's hand. Erica wants to hit the other woman, money be damned. Who in their right mind would tell a little kid to go with a ghost? She's _insane_.

Derek's the one that breaks the spell this time around, picking up an empty glass and throwing it at Cora. The glass passes through her and shatters against the doors, the ghost disappearing with a pained shriek in the same instant the doors swing open again.

"I'd advise none of you to go wandering tonight," Jennifer says. She looks exhilarated, like the cat that got the cream. Erica makes as though to stand, wanting to scratch that smugness off Jennifer's face, but Jordan holds her against his chest. "You'd agree, wouldn't you, Derek?"

"As a matter of fact, I would," Derek nods.

They all have bad dreams that first night in Echo House, Erica can sense it when she reaches out to touch the wall that separates her room from Jackson's. Jackson dreams of walking through a cluttered attic with Erica, flirting with her in a way he'd never be able to pull off in real life, but then Erica's disappeared and that reporter, Raeken, is jumping out of a closet to scare him.

Farther down the hall, Stiles and Liam are whispering about the girl in the wardrobe mirror. Liam had seen her walking through fog, but Stiles had only seen the wardrobe door open and felt the prickling of fear as the fine hairs at his nape stood on end. They're under the covers now and Erica smiles as she watches Stiles tickle Liam.

On the other side of them, Derek's dreams are waxing and waning, caught in a whirlwind of emotions. One moment he's running from a woman dressed in white, the next he's wandering through the same dank attic from Jackson's nightmare, and then he's lying on a picnic blanket near a lazy brook with Stiles curled beside him. In that dream, the pair watch a rabbit hop through tall grass, soaking up the warm sunshine.

Erica's own dream is so lifelike that she doesn't even realize she's fallen asleep at first. She's walking down the hall, the runner soft under her bare feet as she turns the corner that leads to the staircase. The wood of the railing is warm under her hand, a living thing with a pulse that's drawing them all deeper into itself.

" _It's a labyrinth_ ," a man says, voice echoing off the walls and inside her mind. " _I'll bet the minotaur is waiting for some poor sap in the basement_." _"_

 _It's too dark in here_ ," another man says, his voice overlapping with the other.

 _"I thought the house was supposed to be empty_ ," says yet another man. The voices grow louder and louder until Erica has to press her hands over her ears to block them out.

"Stop it," she shouts, overbalancing and falling the last two feet to the ground. The landing is hard, but the voices have stopped and she'll worry about a concussion later. Right now, she wants a drink and fuck this house for trying to get to her. She's stronger than this, she knows she is.

The kitchen is down the hall from the billiards room they've turned into their base camp. The tiles are cold and slick, a shock after the warm wood and rugs, but a welcome one. If she's focused on the cold, then she's not focused on the voices waiting in the background. She pulls the fridge door open and its warm light spills across the floor, a yellow cone of safety. She allows her eyes to slip closed for a moment, pretending she's home again and Boyd is waiting for her upstairs. He'd be star-fished out across the mattress, their blankets half off the bed so that only his feet are covered to battle the Louisiana humidity.

It's the faint scuttle of feet over tile that shatters the fantasy. Dread twists itself around Erica's spine like clinging vines, keeping her in place so that she can't turn and see what's stalking her. Her fingers tighten where they're grasping the fridge's door handle, knuckles straining against the thin skin. The scuttling grows louder and then there's a cold breath of air curling against her nape.

Erica forces herself to turn, prying her fingers loose and then jumping back in shock at what she finds waiting for her. Theo Raeken is standing there, half shrouded in an inky blackness that's unnatural, crawling over his face and torso like thousands of beetles. He's starting to decay, the wound at his neck red and infected as he lurches toward her on unsteady legs.

"Say cheese, Erica," he growls. "Say cheese!"

Erica sits bolt upright in her bed, a rattling breath caught in her throat like a wad of bubblegum. Her room is empty, the shadows staying in their respective places instead of crawling.

"It was just a dream," she whispers, bringing her knees up against her chest. "Just a dream, that's all. Jackson had the same one." She's content to chatter to herself until dawn breaks, but a knock on her door cuts her off. Her head snaps up at the sound, so loud in the darkness that it echoes inside her mind like those voices had in her nightmare. "Who is it?" Her voice sounds weak to her own ears, a scared little girl hiding from monsters.

"It's Melissa." Erica lets out a soft sigh of relief, pushing the blankets aside and making to get out of bed. Her feet pause just before they touch the carpet, carrying the old fear of boogeymen hiding under beds back to the forefront of her mind. What if Theo Raeken's decaying hand grabs her ankle? What if he drags her down into the labyrinth with no rope to find her way out again? "Erica, are you there?"

"I'm coming." She's slow to lower her feet the rest of the way, but no grasping hands shoot out from under the bed. "You're being silly," she admonishes herself. "It was just a nightmare." Shaking her head, she strides across the room and refuses to think that her newfound burst of speed is because part of her is still afraid a monster may be lurking in the shadows.

Melissa is waiting out in the hallway, a white housecoat zipped over her nightgown. The vivid color of the housecoat stands out in stark relief against the blackness, a shock of color that has Erica thinking about salt on a black tablecloth. She's smiling, though, and Melissa's smile is a thing of comfort.

"Come on," Melissa urges, waving Erica out into the hall. There's another moment of hesitation where Erica looks left and then right before stepping out, closing the bedroom door behind her.

"What is it?"

"Derek found something amazing. It explains so much. Everyone else is outside waiting on us." Melissa loops her arm through Erica's and tugs her down the long hallway, cold even through the thick layers of clothing. Now that she thinks about it, the entire house is cold. She can almost see her breath fanning out as a white vapor.

"Where are we going?"

"The reflection pond out back." They don't talk much after that and Erica really can see her breath when they make it around the massive house. It doesn't make sense, it's nearly June and the heat should be almost smothering.

"Are you cold?"

"No, it feels great." Maybe being a native of California prepares you for weird temperatures. A lot of tourists complain about the thick heat back home and Erica barely notices it half the time. One year when it was particularly bad, she and Boyd had walked around the house in their bathing suits.

The reflection pond would have been beautiful back in the day, a long rectangle of carven stone with a statue of Corinne at the far end of it. Corinne's reflection is distorted by moonlight in the black water, lily pads bisecting it. The eyes of the statue almost look real and Erica decides this must be another dream. Statues don't have real eyes, not ones like these.

She starts forward with a mind to do some damage this time around. She'd been too surprised to hurt Raeken, but Corinne's statue is fair game. Erica climbs over the lip of the pond, splashing down into the turbid water and gasping at how cold it is. It feels like a thousand needles pricking her legs all the way up to her hips, but she doesn't let that stop her forward march.

She's at the foot of the statue when it starts to move, a hand of cold marble grasping Erica's nightgown. Erica slaps at it, kicking her feet wildly as the statue steps down off its podium. Corinne doesn't seem to notice the abuse as her lips curve into a vicious smile, shoving Erica down into the water. As the water goes up her nose, Erica realizes this isn't another nightmare, this is really happening.

"Help," she screams, little bubbles of air drifting to the surface. "Melissa, help me!" The water is foul on her tongue, thicker than it should be. It's not right, nothing on this property is right. _Oh God, I can't breathe! I can't breathe!_ Why isn't Melissa helping her? Erica thrashes violently until there's no more air in her lungs, her burning chest forcing her to go limp under those pushing hands. Erica can barely see Corinne leaning over her now, black spots spilling across her vision like an oil slick.

As Erica is drowning outside, the others wake up from nightmares about twisting hallways and hands beating against their doors.

The house is alive with music as Corinne glides through the halls, the other spirits darting out of her way with little gasps of fear and reverent bows of their heads. She doesn't smile, Corinne's never been the type to smile freely, but her posture is relaxed and that's good enough. Marin is waiting for her in the attic, the bare bones of it something of an insult. They've been working on this damn house for so long, but the attic is never finished. There's always some sort of infestation or water damage no matter how many carpenters set to work up here.

"Did you do the job," Marin asks. She's sitting on an old picnic blanket, her hair hanging in thin braids down her back. Corinne loves her like this, absent the headwrap Peter had always required, absent all pretenses that society has forced upon them. "Is the blonde one dead?"

"Yes," Corinne murmurs, settling down on the blanket. "I drowned her in the reflection pond. She put up such a struggle."

"She'll be good for the house." For the first time in a decade, the house is breathing again. These psychics are good for Echo House, they'll help her heal again. "How are we going to deal with the others? We can't let them leave yet. Not until we've got little Liam."

"Yes, that one is going to be troublesome. He wants to be here, I can sense that much, but he'll want to protect his brother more than that. If we can kill Stiles, Liam will surrender." Marin hums and leans back on her elbows, her smile as threatening as any predator. Corinne's come to love that smile. "What?"

"How does it feel to have your great grandson here again? You nearly had him that last time." Yes, she had. He'd been right here in this room with a psychic pulse buried deep inside his chest, just begging to be tapped into. If he'd just taken the goddamn hammer when she offered it to him, Echo House could have flourished.

"I'll have him soon enough. It'll be nice for Cora to have a brother again." Her own son, her darling Laurent, had died off the grounds and his soul was free to wander. He wasn't stuck here, he hadn't even visited before his death. Part of Corinne hates him for that, but a larger part understands. It doesn't matter, though, because she'll have Derek and he'll be a good substitution.

"I think we should go after Deucalion next. Perhaps he can do something about the draft up here." Corinne doesn't smile, but the kiss she presses to Marin's lips is more than enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "The year she had run fleetly through the dewy grass under the moon- the night of wine, when dreams condensed out of thin air like the nightmilk of fantasy."


	8. Pure Human Fuckery

"We're sorry, your call cannot be completed as dialed," Jackson's saying as Jordan rounds the corner. "Just pay your bill and kiss my ass!" He slams the phone down into the cradle and turns, jumping back a step when he finds Jordan behind him. "What the hell do you want? Were you spying?"

"I heard a raised voice and decided to investigate," he says, holding up a hand in surrender.

"You'd be one of the first guys to die in a horror movie."

"Surprisingly enough, you're not the first person to tell me that. Is the phone messed up?" Jackson glances over at it, lip curling up in what Jordan's come to think of as his trademark sneer. He doubts any aristocrat could do it with more cutting precision than Jackson Whittemore.

"I think the house is disrupting the call. My family is beyond rich, so it's not a problem on that end." He lets out a sharp sigh and the sneer disappears. Jackson's moods are mercurial at best, swinging back and forth so swiftly that Jordan has a hard time keeping up. "My father's going to go crazy if I don't talk to him soon. It's not a very long trip for him, even at the best of times." _Just like you_ , Jordan thinks cruelly.

"I'm sorry about that." Jackson lets out another sigh, a soft exhale this time as he settles down on the bench near the side table. Jordan joins him, offering up the cup of coffee he'd intended for himself.

"I'm thinking about getting out of here before he shows up." Jackson takes the cup and downs it in thirty seconds flat, setting it beside the phone. "Besides, Hale's getting on my nerves. Jennifer too, actually." He takes on a mocking falsetto the next time he speaks," If you look to your left, you will see the ghosts of Cora Hale and Douglas Posey. Don't worry, they're perfectly harmless."

"I agree with you on that front."

"Underneath her phony tour guide shtick, she's as crazy as the Red Queen. Off with their heads." Jordan smiles at the image of Jennifer in a ridiculous costume sitting in a high seat that towers over all of them. If she's the Red Queen, then Liam is Alice, Stiles is the White Rabbit, Derek is the Mad Hatter, and the rest of them are playing cards trying to paint the roses red. "And that creepy kid—"

"Easy. Liam's an innocent in all of this."

"He's more powerful than anyone I've ever met. It's like his ability is sucking all the heat out of the air." Jordan's been wondering about that, the steadily dropping temperature. He'd spent the night in the solarium and the vapor leaving his mouth was more than just cigarette smoke. "Are you a shrink out in the real world?" Jordan snorts at the absurdity of that, shaking his head.

"No, I'm a cop. I do a lot of hand-holding on the more difficult cases, though." He clears his throat and sits up a little straighter, trying to look like every TV shrink he's ever seen. In the end, he looks more like Sidney Freedman rather than Doctor Phil. "Just get it off your chest." That's enough encouragement for Jackson as he leans forward in his seat, tangent ready to spill out.

"A dead cell, isn't that what Jennifer called this place? You wanna know about dead? I had a dead movie star in bed with me last night." That catches Jordan's attention and soon enough he's leaning forward like Jackson.

"Lydia Martin?"

"Yeah. Only, she doesn't look so hot now unless you dig chicks that have zero meat on their bones. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer my bedmates to be alive. I'm seriously getting tired of Echo House's little tricks." Jackson flops back, looking drained and feeling it when Jordan reaches out to pat his hand. "If David doesn't hear from me soon, he's really going to go nuclear."

"I'll get that cell phone from Derek when I see him. Maybe that'll work." Jackson nods, but he doesn't look hopeful. "Where can I find you if I get it?" He thinks for a long while, thoughts wandering freely for anyone to read. Jordan has better manners than all that, but he still catches a quick glimpse of a leathery stick figure in what Hedda Hopper had called 'the cocktail dress'.

"Billiards room, I think. It feels warmer in there." Jordan nods and rises from his seat, taking the china cup with him back into the kitchen. He'd left his cigarettes in there and he'd love to actually finish a cup of coffee before he faces anyone else. It was bad enough earlier when Jennifer had tried to bite his head off.

The door of the solarium is open when he steps inside, a faint hum drifting into the kitchen. Jordan pours himself some coffee, then wanders over to the solarium door and smiles when he finds Liam. The boy is bent over a set of dominoes, studiously forming a spiral with them.

"Good morning, Liam," he greets softly.

"What's so good about it," Liam asks. He doesn't look away from his task, but his voice suggests that he's grumpy. "Mornings suck."

"You've got me there. I'll be in the kitchen if you need anything." Liam doesn't so much as nod to show he understands, but maybe that's normal for a kid this age. God only knows how bratty Jordan had been when he was eight. Instead of pressing for a response, he drifts back to the stove with the idea to fry up an egg. He's just cracked an egg into a pan when Derek comes in from the hall, struggling to get a black tee on over a wifebeater. "Morning."

"Is it," Derek asks, squinting in the early morning sunlight. "I wouldn't know, I didn't really sleep last night."

"Bad dreams?"

"It varied." He settles down at the island, shirt finally figured out. "I kept having this weird dream that someone was wandering the grounds." His brows furrow and he shivers, but he doesn't elaborate and Jordan doesn't push him. The truth is that he had bad dreams last night, too. He'd dreamed that someone was banging against his door and that a certain reporter was hidden away in his wardrobe. "Is Liam the one humming?"

"Yeah. You want some eggs?"

"Too early for food." Derek does pour himself some coffee, though. He takes it black and doesn't even make a face when he drinks the bitter roast. Jordan's sure that must be a sign of possession. No one drinks black coffee these days unless they're pre-teens trying to look mature or old guys that get frustrated in Starbucks. "Have you seen Jennifer this morning?"

"She's in the parlor fiddling with her equipment. She looks like she hasn't had a good night's sleep in twenty years. I'd tread carefully if I were you."

"She's crabby, huh?"

"I asked her how her night was and she threw a notebook at my head."

"Funny, she usually only does that when the topic of sex comes up." Jordan can't quite bite back his snort and Derek doesn't even bother trying to suppress his smile. It's so easy to talk to him, to talk to everyone here. Maybe it's because they all have something in common, but Jordan thinks it's deeper than that. Potential victims of ghostly homicide sticking together and all that jazz.

"Apparently the video was cloudy, the audio garbled, and there was no recorded telemetry of any use." Jordan transfers his egg carefully to a plate, trying his best not to break the yoke. He's seen enough episodes of Cutthroat Kitchen to know a broken yoke is bad luck.

"What's that?" He glances away from the gold-rimmed dish, following Derek's gaze to the freshly discovered wine cellar. He doesn't notice that the yoke breaks, but he'll think of it later when he's facing down a beastie in an upstairs corridor.

"The wine cellar. The door to it was open when I came down this morning." The lie comes easily, it's simpler to make these people believe he's sane and sleeps in his bedroom rather than letting them know he's slightly off-balance and spent the night in the solarium. It really had opened by itself, though. He hadn't noticed it until he came in to make coffee. "I gather that it's not in the plans either."

"It's not." The men start forward at the same time, Jordan only staying in place long enough to set the spatula aside.

"Echo House hasn't just woken up, Derek. It's become the House and Garden version of Frankenstein's Monster." Derek reaches the wine cellar first, nudging the door all the way open so they can step inside. Like the rest of the house, the room is cold and dusty. Bottles line the shelves, untouched for so long that the gold foil along their necks have been decorated with lace spider webs.

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it? Stop and listen for a moment." Derek does so, gazing up at the stone ceiling with a dawning horror. He can hear the hammers and saws, too. He _knows_ what's happening here, but he doesn't want to admit it. To admit he knows is to admit that he's got a psychic connection to the property. "I've heard enough of that to worry me. Raeken's persistent non-appearance worries me, too. You would think if he were still here—still here and alive—that we would have run into him by now."

"It's a big house."

"Big house or not, we're all going to look guilty as sin the longer we go without reporting his disappearance. If he turns up dead or doesn't turn up at all, we're all going to find ourselves in an interrogation room like Marin." _If any of us are left to interview_ , he adds silently.

"Of course we'll be alive for the interview," Derek says, not seeming to realize he'd plucked Jordan's thought out of the air. "Don't be ridiculous." He turns his back to Jordan, crossing the last few feet of space between him and the shelf on the back wall. He plucks a bottle at random, seemingly done with the conversation. "Dom Perignon 1949." He holds the green bottle up for Jordan to see. "It's a very good year." Jordan sighs and allows the topic to drop for now, taking the bottle from Derek.

"In my experience, they're all good years. Come on, let's get out of here. I'm starting to feel claustrophobic." Which is a ridiculous thing to say in a house as large as this one, but it's frighteningly true most of the time. Despite the sprawling grounds and spacious rooms, it always feels as though someone is breathing down his neck. "I'll bet this tastes great with my egg."

"I'm pretty sure champagne this fancy would taste good with a taco you picked up off the street." He tears the foil off and pops the cork when he gets back to the island, pouring some of the champagne in a glass meant for orange juice.

"Care to wet your whistle?"

"No, I'm two years sober and I'd like to keep it that way."

"I can dump it out if you'd like."

"Hell no, that's too expensive to dump down the drain. If all goes well on this trip, we'll pack the rest of those bottles up and sell them after the house is gone. I'll even split the profits with you fifty-fifty since you were with me when we snooped."

"I'm not gonna turn that down." He's trying his best to eke out a living, but the prices in LA are steep and he's on the verge of being kicked out. Between the five grand Jennifer's promised him and the money he'll get from this booze, he should be set for a while. Long enough to make Sergeant at any rate. "Cheers."

"Cheers." They clink their cups together and take a drink. The champagne bursts across Jordan's tongue in a symphony of flavor, creamy with a hint of acidity, a fruity bouquet that takes him back to the summer he spent working at a vineyard. He thinks he'll keep this bottle for himself, bringing it out for special occasions only. "Is it good?" There's a hungry gleam in Derek's eyes, an addict aching for a fix.

"It could be worse." Derek nods slowly, taking another drink of the scorching hot coffee. Jordan's own coffee is slowly going cold next to the stove. He grabs the plate and a fork, alternating between eating and drinking. He doesn't touch his coffee until the glass of champagne has been emptied.

"Do you feel weird here, Jordan? Ever since the hammering started yesterday, I've been feeling like an exposed nerve."

"It's because this place is feeding off us." Derek frowns and then nods his acceptance of the answer. "Although I'm sure it finds us all rather tasty, its primary sources of nourishment are little Liam and you." He actually looks taken aback by that idea, green eyes widening just a fraction. He's surprised, but Jordan thinks a part of him has suspected that for a while.

"Me? I'm as psychic as a ham sandwich."

"I don't know what you were before you came here and the house almost ate you alive, but I know now that you're a powerful psychic transmitter operating on Echo House's wavelength." Derek shakes his head stubbornly, reminding Jordan of a little boy that's just been told Santa isn't real. "It almost had you once. It wants you back. It wants Liam, too."

"You're crazy."

"Perhaps. I'd vouch that Jennifer is crazier, and she means to have her proof even if someone has to die for her to get it."

"No, you're wrong."

"Really? Let's ask Mister Raeken if we meet him again." Derek sets his coffee aside, digging through his pants pocket for something. "What are you doing?"

"Trying to make sure Argent actually sent Raeken here and we're not worried about nothing." He makes a small sound of success when he manages to get the cell phone out. "If he did, I'll call the police and report him missing."

"Jennifer won't like that."

"According to you, she's not very happy anyway." He presses the speed dial and holds the phone up to his ear, waiting patiently for the call to connect. "Hey, Professor, this is Derek Hale again. You remember me, right? I'm the one that told you my girlfriend's dick is bigger than yours. Anyway, I'm calling because I need to talk to you about Theo Raeken. We know he's here somewhere and we're ready to call the cops and report you both for trespassing. Call me back when you get this. You must have the number since it's your cell phone."

"You told him Jennifer had a bigger dick," Jordan asks when Derek hangs up.

"I'm a smartass by nature and I've long since stopped caring about what pops out. It gets me in trouble a lot, but I'm never bored." Derek shrugs with a pleased smile, setting the phone down on the island beside his empty cup. "Will you talk to Argent if he calls back?"

"It'd be my pleasure."

Ten miles away, Gerard Argent is staring down at his answering machine in abject horror. _"He slit his wrists and wrote your name on the wall in his own blood before he died_ ," the voice on it had said. He doesn't know it's all a trick yet, that Echo House is thirsty for more visitors. _He slit his wrists_ …. _Wrote your name on the wall in his own blood_ …. _Dead_. Theo Raeken is dead and it's all his fault.

Professor Argent leaves the office at a dead sprint and he arrives at the house within the hour, beaten only by David Whittemore in his Rolls-Royce.

"Good morning, Liam," Derek greets as he steps down into the solarium. He can't be in the kitchen anymore, not knowing there's a treasure trove of free booze waiting on him to break down. Liam doesn't glance up from his dominoes, doesn't even stop humming. Derek kneels down in front of him, smiling freely and gladly. "Good morning, Liam."

"Morning," Liam says, grinning brightly when he finally looks up. "Wanna see something cool?"

"I'd love to." Liam picks up a domino out of the pile, holding it flat in the palm of his hand. There's a faint prickling of energy, the warm air growing hot and then cold again as the domino rises into the air, doing a series of flips before tapping another domino and sending the whole spiral he'd built into a collapsed pile. Liam looks to Derek expectantly and Derek gives in with a laugh. "It's official, I'm adopting you. You're my cool little brother now whether you like it or not."

"That's nothing. Check this out." Liam focuses hard and then Derek can hear Sea Wolf echoing in the room. He rises from the cobblestones, shocked to find the source is a gardenia. The music flows out of it without a trace of static, just purely wonderful to his eardrums.

"Epic, Lee."

"Is he showing off again," Stiles asks, coming into the solarium. He's not smiling, but there's a softness to his lips that suggests he might if given the right situation. "He can also bend spoons, turn on lights, and set off car alarms. That last one we figured out after a particularly awful tantrum at the mall. What do the car alarms mean, Lee?"

"No toys," Liam mutters with a sour twist to his mouth. He glances over at Derek with the long-suffering exasperation of little brothers everywhere. "It was only a little tantrum, Mischief is just a drama king." He goes back to his dominoes after that, tuning out the adults with practiced ease.

"He never talks to strangers like that."

"Yeah, well, I'm not a stranger," Derek shrugs. "I've adopted him, so he's my brother now. Congrats, Stiles, you've been robbed." That gets the smile he's been looking for, a beautiful thing that lights up Stiles' whole face. Brown eyes brighten and there's a faint crackle that suggests he's got a touch of magic hidden inside him. The smile fades after a moment though, those eyes turning wary as he glances at the empty doorway and back to Derek.

"This is a big deal for Jennifer, isn't it?" Derek moves off down one of the paths, Stiles following after him as naturally as if he's been doing it all his life. Derek likes how in sync they are, the comfort of being on the same wavelength.

"The biggest. Because of all the disappearances, Echo House is a white whale in the field of psychic research. Now that Argent's gotten her tenure revoked, it's even more important. If she comes back with proof of paranormal activity, she'll be okay. If not…" Derek trails off because he doesn't want to jinx her. He doesn't love Jennifer, but he wants her to get this proof.

"I had no idea things were so dire for her. She's paying Lee a pretty nice chunk of change for this. I wonder if she can actually afford it."

"So do I." They come to a stop in another section of the solarium, having made a wide semi-circle and ended up a few feet behind Liam. Stiles is looking up at him with something like shock and he doesn't understand why until he speaks again.

"You really don't know? I thought you two were closer than that."

"We're dating, if you can call it that. Most nights she sleeps on the couch and we can go days without actually talking to each other. She's using me for this house, that's all. I put up with it because I'd be lonely otherwise. It's either date Jennifer or get a cat and I'm allergic to cats." There's an awkward pause where Stiles glances away, more interested in his shoes than Derek. "Tell me about Liam."

"He's eight," he says, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jeans. "He loves music like Glenn Miller and Sea Wolf. He's also telepathic and psychokinetic, which are probably the least most important things about him." To prove his point, he brushes his fingers over a waxy strand of ivy. "Can I show you something?"

"Sure thing." He leads Derek a few feet away, stopping in front of a rose bush. "Everything was dead in this room yesterday."

"The house is coming to life. We all feel it."

"Maybe, but the house didn't do this. Lee did." Derek gazes around in wonder, taking in the greenery and the sweet scent of flowers. The solarium is thriving again thanks to one little boy with a stubborn will. "It's the other side of what he is. It's not all frozen pipes and falling stones. When I look at him, I don't see ruin. I see roses."

"What did you mean when you said falling stones and frozen pipes?"

"A dog bit me a couple weeks ago and Lee retaliated by having stones fall out of the sky to crush the Stantons' house. He didn't understand that the dog had already been put down, he just knew he wanted to protect me. A few days after that, a reporter got ahold of the drawing Lee had done of the accident and ran a story about how he's psychic."

"That doesn't sound good."

"It wasn't. My dad and I were arguing about it and…. Well, Liam doesn't like loud voices, so he made us shut up by messing with the pipes. They exploded and the water froze." Stiles ducks his head, but not before Derek sees the tears gathering in his lashes. "He's a big time telekinetic and that's all Jennifer cares about."

Derek looks away so Stiles can compose himself, spotting Liam at the windows that look into the kitchen. Liam has gone stock still, his fingers clutching at the sill as though to keep himself upright. Derek wonders if Jordan's still in there, maybe doing something to keep the boredom at bay.

"Watch'cha lookin' at, Lee," Derek asks. Liam shakes his head like he's not too sure of that himself. He comes running over after a moment, frustration lining his face and making him look far older than he is. "What's wrong, kiddo?"

"Deucalion," Liam says, frowning over his shoulder at the window. "He's with Erica, only it's not really Erica. She feels _wrong_. I think it's a trick."

"Maybe she's just grumpy this morning," Stiles suggests. "How many times have you thought Dad was an imposter and it turned out he just didn't get enough sleep?" Liam's frown grows deeper as he settles down on the cobblestones again. Derek doesn't see how he can stand the cold. "We'll go check just to make sure."

"Be careful."

"Always." Derek and Stiles move in tandem, leaving the solarium behind as they head into the kitchen. It's empty by the time they get there, but the door that leads outside is ajar and Derek can spot the back of Deucalion's head as he disappears around the house. "Is he out there?"

"Looks like he's taking a walk," Derek says, shutting the door. "It's a bit damp out there for my taste, but to each his own."

"Was Erica with him?"

"I didn't see her."

While Derek and Stiles pour themselves a cup of coffee, things outside keep the house's momentum building. Professor Argent tears through the woods, blindly searching for Jackson's father who has already been knocked out by the hollowed shell of Theo Raeken. As Theo hoists David into a fireman's carry and takes him into the Mirror Library, Deucalion Blackwood's weakened heart begins to fail.

Jordan is almost to the billiards room with the cell phone in his pocket when he hears a loud chanting and screaming. He takes off down the hall at a dead sprint, pausing in the doorway a moment as he takes in the scene with shock. Jackson is standing near the row of windows, fingers in his ears and talking gibberish to drown out the sound of Deucalion banging and screaming outside.

"Oh, my God," Jordan breathes, all thoughts of being nice forced aside by anger. He storms across the room, pushing Jackson aside roughly as he snarls down at him. "He came to you for help and you turned your back on him!"

"Call an ambulance," Deucalion is shouting. He's clutching at his chest with one hand and beating at the window with the other, too weak to break the glass. Jordan doesn't have that problem, taking up a pool stick and jamming it against the glass. It doesn't so much as shake in its frame, remaining perfectly intact despite how hard Jordan hits it.

"Deucalion! Hold on!" The color drains rapidly out of Deucalion's cheeks, leaving him an ashy gray as he stumbles backwards. There's a moment, just an instant of hope, where Jordan thinks Deucalion will try to get around the house again. He takes another step, but then he's going down on a knee. "Deucalion! Deucalion!"

"Statue," he gasps out. "The statue was going to kill me." Deucalion topples onto his side and rolls on his back, gazing up at the stone awning with unseeing eyes.

"No! Duke, wake up! Jackson, get the others!" Jordan turns when he doesn't hear footsteps, finding himself alone in the room. The only sign that Jackson had been in here at all are the loose billiard balls sitting on the pool table. Jordan snarls again, tossing the stick away and moving out of the room. If nothing else, he can go around the house and bring Deucalion's body inside. He deserves respect.

Overhead, drifting through the house on a gust of stale air, the whispering starts up again.

_"A house is a place of shelter, it's the body we put on over our bodies. As our bodies grow old, so do our houses. As our bodies may sicken, so do our houses sicken. And what of madness? If mad people live within, doesn't this madness creep into the rooms and walls and corridors? The very boards? Don't we sometimes sense that madness reaching out to us? Isn't that a large part of what we mean when we say a place is unquiet, festered up with spirits? We say 'haunted' but we mean the house has gone insane."_

Jordan swallows hard because he knows who that voice belongs to now. It's Jennifer's racing thoughts, a continuous monologue.

He's pretty sure she's losing her grasp on sanity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "That wasn't any act of God. That was an act of pure human fuckery."


	9. That Blue and Lonely Section of Hell

Jackson hates the whispering most of all. He can handle the visions of dead people, he can even handle them luxuriating in his bed as long as they stay on their own side, but the _whispering_. God, it makes him feel like he's losing his mind. To be perfectly honest, he doesn't have much of his mind left to lose.

He'd run off after Jordan had pushed him in the billiards room, feeling a flush of shame for the first time in his life as he watched poor Deucalion collapse. Now he doesn't know where he is, stuck somewhere high above the others. He pauses long enough to look over the railing, spotting staircase after staircase lining the darkness below.

"Somebody help me, I'm lost," he shouts to that darkness. He gets no response, of course, nothing but the whispering of a house gone mad. _It's my name_ , he realizes with a distant throb of horror. _They're calling my name_. It would have been comforting if it were the other psychics calling for him, but he knows it's the house. This damnable, crazy house filled to bursting with dead things that no longer resemble humans.

A door rises up ahead of him and he bursts through it without pausing to think it might be a bad idea. He pushes past dresses wrapped in plastic and pauses once he fumbles his way into open space with darkness closing in around him. _You have a flashlight, you moron_. He pulls the flashlight from his belt and clicks it on, the cone of light doing little to penetrate the shadows. It does enough to let him know he's standing in a closet that reeks of mothballs, surrounded on all sides by Corinne Hale's clothes.

"Where the hell did I come from," he wonders out loud. A woman's laugh answers his question, rumbling through the floorboards like an earthquake. Jackson spins in that direction, taking a few hesitant steps forward. A face pops out of the darkness, Lydia Martin wrapped up like an old dress as her bony hand grabs for his throat. Jackson bats the hand aside and nearly trips over his own feet in his desperation to get the _fuck_ out.

The closet door rises up in front of him again and there's light creeping in under the bottom of it. He flings himself forward and through it, slamming it shut behind him to keep the ghost locked inside. He takes a moment to breathe after that, looking around to get his bearings. He's in a bedroom now, a few tape recorders set out on the bedside table and a leather jacket draped over the back of a chair.

"Okay, okay…." Derek had been wearing that same coat yesterday afternoon, which means this is his and Jennifer's room. If Jackson is in their room, then he's on the second floor and all he has to do is go down one flight of stairs to find the others. He nods with newfound determination, striding forward only to pause with his hand on the doorknob. What if this is just another trick? What if he steps out in that hallway and some creature swallows him whole?

" _Your father's looking for you, Jackson_." He sighs in relief, his whole body sagging with it. That voice belongs to Erica and he doesn't think there's a violent bone in her body. Jackson turns with a smile that turns sour as he finally gets a look at her. Erica is standing a few feet away, water dripping from the ends of her long hair and onto the rug. She's still fresh, the only sign of death being a couple of flies clinging to her shoulder and the dark bruises around her neck.

"Oh, Erica, I'm so sorry." He doesn't often feel genuine misery, not the kind that shreds your heart into pieces, but he gets it now. He'd liked Erica, she'd been kind to him when others had barely been civil, and now she's as dead as Deucalion. Erica's smile is devoid of any warmth it once had, her brown eyes now clouded with blood.

" _You need to leave this place, Jackson. I don't want to hurt anyone else_."

" _She doesn't want to hurt you like she hurt me_ ," Deucalion adds, flickering into existence beside her. There are small sores along his head and neck, marks left by scavengers that linger on the grounds. Jackson doesn't need much more encouragement, turning and bursting through the bedroom doors.

The hallway is lit by the afternoon sunlight pouring in through the arched windows and the ground floor is in sight. He takes the stairs two at a time and jumps over the last one entirely, his shoes sliding over the marble before he regains his balance.

"Is anyone here," he shouts. The whispering has stopped, but he can feel the tension wrapping around the house like the pink goo in that dumb Ghostbusters movie. Has everyone left without him? Is this his punishment for not helping Deucalion? He skids around a corner in time to find the others huddled together near the front doors. "Oh, thank God!"

"You," Jordan growls. He looks ready to pummel Jackson to death, but Jackson can't find the energy to give a damn. He stumbles forward, calves burning from all the running.

"I can explain!" He stops when he reaches them, bending over to rest his hands on his knees. "I heard my father while I was playing pool and I thought it was just the house imitating him. I-I thought it was the same thing when Deucalion showed up because why would he be outside by himself? And then I got lost upstairs and I saw Erica and Deucalion and Deucalion said Erica was the one that hurt him—"

"We don't have time for this," Derek snaps. Jackson pushes his way past them, pausing halfway to the door as he feels that tension start to bulge. He can't leave without warning them. He has to repent.

"We need to leave. There's a bubble forming and I don't wanna be around when it decides to pop." He has a feeling that Lady Liberty won't get here fast enough to break them out. If they don't leave now, they never will. But still, trying to voice this in a way the others will understand is frustrating and he keeps tripping over his words.

"What in the world would your father be doing here," Melissa asks. The question catches him off guard and he realizes she asked it so he'd shut up and take a breath. Melissa is just as sweet as Erica and Jackson will eat his own foot before he lets this house take her, too.

"He worries about me. I'm worried about me too, actually, about all of us." He takes another breath, forcing himself to slow down. "I saw Erica and Deucalion upstairs, so they're dead. The house is going to make them kill us, too."

"Where's Liam," Jennifer demands, turning to look at Stiles. Stiles flounders, shaking his head as he looks around. Jackson can't even feel the kid's presence, which is bizarre since Liam Stilinski's power makes him light up like a Christmas tree. "Go find him!" Stiles nods and takes off at a sprint, calling out Liam's name as he goes. "Derek, the doors."

"On it," Derek nods. He and Jennifer move slightly out of sync with each other, yanking and pulling on the doors without so much as budging them. The doors remain stubbornly closed just like Jackson had feared they would. "They're stuck again!"

"They aren't stuck," Jordan says, catching Jackson's eye. For once, Jackson's glad to have the mind-reader around so he doesn't have to deliver bad news. "Someone is keeping them shut so we don't flee before the house gets its feast. My money's on Corinne." Derek frowns and moves over to one of the windows to the left of the door, staring out at the driveway with something like shock. "What is it?"

"Jackson, is that your father's car?" Jackson joins Derek at the window, spotting the Rolls-Royce with its shiny black paint job and silver hood ornament. His heart beats so hard he fears for a second that it will shatter his ribs and he'll be stuck here forever.

"Yeah, it's Papa's Little Scootabout," he confirms, choking back a sob. He's so tired of crying and his eyes are sore. The others all pause and turn to look at him with their brows furrowed. It takes him a moment to realize it's because of what he called the car and he rolls his eyes.

"Did you just call it—"

"Papa's Little Scootabout," he repeats, cutting off Melissa. "Sometimes we'd scootabout for ice cream, and sometimes to the movies, and some— Stop looking at me like that. David called it that when I was little and the name just stuck." Jordan steps up beside him, delivering a reassuring pat to his shoulder.

"I think Papa's Little Scootabout is blocking another car," he says. Jackson looks out again, barely able to spot an old station wagon beyond the vines clinging to the window. "Doesn't look like anyone's in it."

"I'm gonna go see if the kitchen door is open," Derek says, heading off before anyone can offer to join him. Jackson doesn't think that's his brightest idea, separating right now is like going to check out the weird noise in the basement of a house in a horror movie.

"This is why white people get a bad rap in scary movies," Jackson says to no one in particular. "We have no common sense in bad situations. We don't stick together, we turn into Fred from that Scooby-Doo cartoon." Not that Jackson knows much about cartoons or television in general. His mother had been a firm believer that TV rots the brain.

"Speaking of splitting up," Jennifer says, glancing over at him.

"Oh, Christ. What now?"

"Show me where Deucalion is." He groans but doesn't argue, leading the way with Melissa and Jennifer hurrying after him. Jordan stays behind, still working to get the door open even though they both know it'll stay closed as long as Corinne wants it to. Who knows, maybe it'll swing open once they're all dead and forced to stay on the grounds by some invisible leash.

"I think he's by that window," Jackson says once they reach the billiards room. "I didn't exactly get a good look." He lingers in the doorway, the room no longer holding the same warmth it had. The cold is seeping in through the walls and floor, sucking out anything good that had once been in this house.

"Oh, God…" Melissa smacks her palms against the window, trying desperately to break the glass. Jennifer strides across the room and picks up the telephone, dialing 911 over and over with no success. Jackson can read the frustration writing itself across her brow, can see the madness settling into her bones as she slams the phone back into its cradle like Jackson had that morning.

"Open in the name of Jesus," Melissa commands in a voice wet with tears. "Open in the name of God!"

"I get the feeling that God never had much of a presence in Echo House," Jordan says, coming to stand beside Jackson. "We were wrong to come here."

"Don't be such a coward," Jennifer says. Her voice is soft as always, but a dark shadow is clinging to her back like a limpet. Its spindly fingers have tangled themselves in her hair, the pads of them pressed insistently against her scalp. Madness has always had a place in Jennifer's mind, but now it's spreading to the rest of her like cancer.

"Deucalion's dead, Erica's dead, and we can't get out of here," Jackson says, turning as she shoves her way past them. "You need a reality check, lady." Jennifer ignores him, pushing at the window frame and fiddling with the gold knobs that keep it shut, all without any success. Jordan frowns, making his slow way over to her.

"Jennifer," he starts, jumping back when she spins with one sharp nail pressed under his chin.

"Leave me alone," she growls. Jordan takes a few steps back, steadied by Melissa's hand between his shoulder blades. Satisfied that she won't be bothered again, Jennifer turns back to the window and beats her fists against glass that doesn't so much as rattle. It's like the glass has been replaced with plastic, sturdy in the square frames with only a few smudges to show all their hard work.

"Why don't we go see if Derek got the kitchen door open?" Jennifer pauses in her assault, turning slowly to face them with a blankness in her eyes that Jackson doesn't like. None of them move until she gives a sharp nod, then they're out of the billiards room trying to get some space between themselves and the crazy lady.

 _She's going to kill us all_ , Jackson thinks, chewing on his lip.

" _She's certainly going to try_ ," Jordan agrees without speaking. Jackson looks over at him for a moment, seeing a cold sort of resentment making itself at home in the curve of his jaw. Jackson lets out a childish whimper when he spots a phantom fly crawling along that same jaw, marking Jordan for death just as surely as a spot of blood marked Ruth Bridgers in that old Vincent Price flick. Jackson says nothing, looking away as they come into the entry hall once more. He's really getting tired of this hall.

Instead of turning like the others, Jennifer barrels straight ahead toward the front doors. Jackson pauses to watch for a moment, grasping at Melissa's shirtsleeve to make her stop as well. He's not going to be left alone with Psycho McCrazy when the house is already offing them one by one.

"Jennifer, we already established that won't work," he calls after her. Jennifer's stride doesn't falter and she only stops once she reaches the doors, flinging them open and turning to face the others with a satisfied smile.

"You were saying," she asks sarcastically. "They were just stuck." Jackson, Melissa, and Jordan crowd together before making their way over to Jennifer, fingers and shoulders lightly brushing as though the house can't eat them if they're together.

"What about the windows in the billiards room," Melissa asks. "You were pounding on them with your fists, Jennifer. Were they stuck, too?" Jackson doesn't wait for Jennifer's excuse, the urge to find his father more powerful than the urge to stick together. David is the only person that's consistently been there for him and, as much as Jackson likes to complain, not having that scares him. He just wants to find his father and go home.

"David, are you out here," he yells, but not even his own echo reaches him. He shuffles over to the car, hoping that maybe this is all just some mistake. Maybe someone with a car that looks exactly like Papa's Little Scootabout is here and not actually his father. Jackson opens the car door and lets out a small sob when he recognizes David's briefcase in the front seat. The next car offers up a parking pass with a picture of a strict man in his early fifties, the name on it reading _Professor Gerard Argent_.

A distant sound catches his attention, drawing his gaze away from the parking pass. Another sound, a moan of pain, confirms his suspicions that it's coming from the woods. Jackson tosses the ID back into Argent's car and moves around it, facing the woods. He's never been much for nature, he prefers exotic places with indoor plumbing and no mosquitoes.

"Is someone out there?"

He gets no answer this time around, no low moaning or shaking houses, just a blanket of quiet that does more to unnerve him than anything else Echo House has thrown his way.

"Oh, I shouldn't be doing this," he mutters, starting forward. He pushes aside the damp limbs of a weeping willow. "This is how every white guy gets kidnapped by hillbillies." He's careful not to trip as he goes farther into the woods, broken pieces of statues littering the ground and tree branches reaching out to snag against his shirt. "Aw, screw it, I'm not doing this. If there's someone there, stop fooling around!"

A man comes flying out of nowhere, shoving Jackson aside before continuing to run deeper into the woods. "You stay away from me," the man orders, shrill and hysterical.

"Professor, wait!" But Gerard Argent is beyond any such logic, clawing his way past vines and leaves. Jackson tries to follow, but the old man is surprisingly fast. By the time Jackson makes it five feet, he can no longer hear the distant sounds of Argent crashing through the woods. "Professor?"

" _You should have left like we told you to_." He goes still, a sudden chill freezing his veins and making his breath come out in puffs of white vapor. He doesn't want to turn around because he knows who's waiting for him. He knows _what_ is waiting for him if he does. _"Look at me, Jackson._ "

"Please, don't make me."

" _Look at me or I'll make you. You won't like me if I have to use force._ " So Jackson turns, legs going numb and wobbly when he sees what's become of Deucalion. There are more sores than before and thin blue lines scattered over his face as his body starts to break down. It always starts slow and gains traction, the rot spreading until the dead are nothing more than bones with a bit of skin stretched over them. _"You're no good to anyone, bub_."

"I'm sorry…. I'm sorry, I'm sorry." He keeps babbling as Deucalion grows closer, flinching away from ragged nails that try to scrape over his chin.

" _I've got an idea. Why don't you go hang yourself in the parlor like Douglas Posey?_ " Those cold, stiff fingers brush over Jackson's cheek and that's the straw that breaks the camel's back. He's off and running before his mind even registers it, a mad dash for the closest thing to safety he has out here. He practically throws himself into the house, only stopping long enough to slam the door shut before racing to where the others have gathered near the long table between the stairs.

"What happened," Jennifer demands. "What's with the hysterics?"

"I saw Deucalion again, that's what," Jackson shouts. "This stupid house has him lurking around in the woods like the big bad wolf!" His lower back is aching from the sprint and his right ankle is starting the throb (he'll find a bruise there later from where he'd hit it against a piece of statue). He stays upright by sheer force of will, though there's a definite sway. "I saw the professor, too. He was real enough to push me against a damn tree."

"That's not possible—"

"Like hell it isn't! I just ran after him through those woods trying to get him to calm down! If he isn't real, then I'm the Easter Bunny!"

"You're lying."

"No, he's not," Jordan confirms grimly. Jackson isn't going to lie, Jordan's starting to grow on him. Jackson would gladly be his sugar daddy if they make it out of this place alive. They don't even have to have sex, he just wants someone to talk to. Jackson's brows furrow and then he's rolling his eyes as he realizes that he just described a therapist.

"As if all of that wasn't bad enough already, my father's somewhere behind the house and I'm pretty sure I need therapy," Jackson says, the words carried out on a long sigh. He looks over at Jordan, raising his brows. "Think you'd make a good therapist?"

"I doubt it."

"I can pay you two thousand bucks for two weeks."

"I'm your man." The sound of rushing feet has all of them looking toward the hall that runs past the parlor and kitchen, finding Stiles as he skids to a stop. There's a flush to his cheeks and you don't have to be psychic to know something's got him in a panic.

"Lee's had an accident," he says, breathless from the run. "Jennifer, you have to come quick. H-he's unconscious and Derek's trying to wake him up, but…. Please, just hurry."

"Where is he," Jennifer asks, the crazed light leaving her eyes if only for a moment. This is a real-world problem, one that can affect her investigation, and she needs it solved as soon as possible.

"In the parlor near the kitchen."

Derek's got Liam laid out on the couch when they find him, waving a handkerchief under Liam's nose. The scent of lemon is strong, like someone dumped an entire bottle of Pine-Sol out, but Jackson's willing to bet that it's coming from the handkerchief. Impromptu smelling salts was never something Jackson thought he would see on this trip.

"How is he," Jennifer asks. She kneels beside the couch, checking Liam's pulse and then pressing a hand to his cheek. There's a bloody gash near his hairline, turning the pale strands of hair a grisly red.

"The phone's working again," Melissa says, holding up the handset. "Should I call an ambulance?"

"We're not calling anyone yet." Jennifer's tone brooks no argument, the madness slipping back to the forefront. The shadow's grown darker, a perfect silhouette.

"To hell with that," Jackson fumes. "I'm getting out of this house!" No one stops him when he storms off again and part of him is thankful for it, the other part is hurt because it's as though none of them care about him. _To hell with them, too_ , he decides. _I've given them plenty of warning and I'm not dying here_.

Behind him comes a God awful screech and the sound of the landline tumbling to the floor.

He keeps running until he finally makes it to the front doors again, the knob cold against his palm. He's got the door opened a crack, just enough for him to breathe fresh air, when he hears Erica.

" _Where are you going, Jackson?_ " He turns and spots her across the hall, facing away from him. Jackson turns again, his hand going back to the doorknob as he readies to head out into the sunshine. A cold, dead hand lands on his shoulders, leathery fingers gripping him and forcing him to face their owner.

"Oh God…." Lydia and Erica are waiting for him, Lydia's hand sliding off his shoulder with a quiet whisper of fabric. "You're not really there. You're dead." He backs up, wanting to flee but unable to convince his feet to do so. "Both of you are dead."

" _We're not, though, Jackson. No one truly dies here_."

"Tell that to Deucalion's dead body lying outside the billiards room."

" _You should join us_ ," Lydia says, crooning as they draw closer. Their hands are cold as they reach for him, running over his chest like the world's most macabre burlesque show.

" _Life could be different for you here,"_ Erica adds. _"It could be better."_

" _It would be nice. You could spend all your time with us_." Jackson shrinks away from their touch, hunching his shoulders around his ears.

"I'll pass," he says. "Echo House is too much like a roach motel. They check in but they don't check out." He brings his hand up, pressing it against his forehead and then shooting it out at the ghosts like he's holding a handful of disappearing powder. "Not there!" The spirits vanish with only the smell of stale perfume left behind. He lets out a sigh, resting his hand against the doorframe as his heartbeat starts to slow. It's never good to drive while you're upset.

Jackson's just about to head out when the door slams shut without warning, severing four of his fingers at the second knuckle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just … come out the other side. Or you don't."


	10. Repay Service With Pain

"Honey, can you hear me," Jennifer's asking. She doesn't seem to hear the unholy screech that comes through the phone's speaker or the crashing sound of Melissa shoving it away from her. Jennifer's attention is focused on Liam as he blinks open a pair of dark blue eyes. Liam says nothing as he sits up, a glaze settling over his eyes like he's caught in a dream. "Liam?"

"That's not him," Stiles says, shaking his head. Liam glances over at Stiles, but he doesn't really see him. "Why are you doing this?"

" _We seldom have company at Echo House these days."_ The voice that leaves Liam isn't his own, it belongs to a woman. It's soft and melodious, the most beautiful voice Melissa has ever heard, but there's a wickedness in it as well. Stiles takes a threatening step forward, his teeth bared in a snarl that rivals any lion.

"Get the fuck out of my brother, Corinne. You get out right now!" Corinne doesn't respond to that, the smile taking over Liam's face making him look demonic.

" _These halls are so lonely, you know. There aren't enough of us around to keep building. Liam holds the power to keep Echo House going for the next decade at the least, so you'll forgive me for insisting that you and your friends stay a while longer."_ The house responds to its mistress' command and Liam's power, doors slamming shut all through the house with enough force to send small cracks through the door frames. The very foundation seems to shift and groan in protest until the silence falls just as suddenly. _"You should check on poor Jackson. We wouldn't want him going into shock before he can be useful._ "

"Stay with Liam," Derek says to Jennifer and Stiles. Melissa isn't sure anyone could tear either of them away from the boy's side as he goes limp again. The only reason she doesn't stay behind as well is because she's afraid of what Corinne might do through the boy next.

"I've got medical training," Melissa says. "I'll come with you."

"I'll come as well," Jordan says. The three of them rush out of the room, calling out Jackson's name. When they find him, curled up near the front doors, he's clutching at his wrist and rocking back and forth. Melissa drops down beside him, her training taking over as she wraps a handkerchief around the remains of his fingers and ties it in place with the small tie from her sweater.

"It's alright," she soothes. "You're gonna be alright." She urges him onto his back, brushing his hair off his forehead. He's gone clammy and the color has drained out of his face, but at least he's still breathing. "Jordan, prop up his feet. Derek, find us a blanket or something to cover him with." The men take orders gracefully, Derek racing off while Jordan cradles Jackson's legs against his thighs. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Jackson Whittemore," Jackson says, breathing fast. "Mother always calls me Jack because she said I used to bounce in my crib like a jack-in-the-box." He rambles a moment longer and then awareness begins to sink in, Melissa's impromptu tourniquet stemming the blood loss. "The house did this to me, didn't it? I was almost out and it didn't like that."

"It was Corinne," Jordan says.

"I don't support violence, but I'd pop that old bitch in the mouth." Melissa's laugh toes the line of hysterical, but then Jackson and Jordan are laughing with her and the tension seems to bleed out of them. What's there to be tense or awkward about when you've seen a guy without his fingers? _Oh God, that's awful_.

"I found a blanket," Derek calls, stopping beside them again. The blanket is thin, more like something you'd swaddle a baby in, but it'll get the job done.

"Let's get him into the billiards room," Melissa says. "There's a couch in there and it's closer than the parlor." She doesn't mention that she's grown to hate the parlor and how cold it is, but, glancing over at her companions, she gets the sense that they hate it, too.

Stiles can feel exhaustion creeping in as Liam comes back to himself, propping him up long enough for Stiles to sit down. He stays slouched against Stiles' side like he doesn't have the strength to stay upright on his own. Maybe he doesn't, Stiles doesn't know if possession is taxing. Hopefully, he'll never find out the answer to that.

"Are you okay," he asks, brushing a finger over Liam's nose. Liam nods slowly, looking around with the same bright-eyed gaze Stiles has grown so used to. "I'm glad, Lee. I was scared earlier."

"Can I say a bad word," Liam asks.

"Sure."

"Corinne's a bitch." Stiles laughs and pulls Liam up onto his lap, snuggling him so that he can feel Liam's chest moving gently up and down. As long as his chest is moving, he's still alive. Beside them, Jennifer's digging through a medical bag that seems to have come out of nowhere and readies a piece of gauze with some medical tape. Stiles knows she must have grabbed during the run to the parlor, but rational thinking isn't something he has time for right now, thank you.

"Hey, sweetie, can you face me for a second," Jennifer implores in a sweet voice. Liam presses his face against Stiles' shoulder, paying no mind to the nasty gash on his forehead or the forming bruise surrounding it.

"Don't be a baby," Stiles says, gentle. "Let her help you." He frowns but moves his head enough that Jennifer can patch him up, looking none-too-pleased about the whole affair. He's never been hurt before, not really. A few bumps and bruises from a failed bike ride, but nothing that required a doctor.

"Do you feel dizzy, hon? Maybe a little lightheaded or sleepy?" Liam shakes his head, but he refuses to look Jennifer in the eye. Stiles can't blame him for that, not with the threads of insanity weaving a mask over the woman's face. "How about we stand up for a second?" Liam waits for a nod from Stiles before sliding off his lap, all three of them standing.

"You feel steady?"

"Yeah," Liam nods.

"Can you tell me how you fell?"

"I was trying to get the dollhouse." He points to the replica of Echo House set up on a high shelf. Beneath this is a chair he must have been using as a step stool, lying on its side now with one of the legs broken off. Honestly, he's lucky he didn't break his neck.

"Next time you want something you can't reach, ask me." Liam's expression of disbelief has Stiles scowling because he already knows what the little smartass about to say even before the words leave his mouth. "Shut it, don't you dare call me short." Stiles's nowhere near short, but Liam is sprouting up like a fucking weed.

"But you are." His shit-eating grin lets Stiles know he's going to be just fine. "Next time I want something out of reach, I'll ask Derek. At least he's a little taller than you." Which is a blatant lie and Stiles will call him out on it once they're aren't in the murder house anymore.

"You're such a brat. I'm gonna sell you to the circus, I swear. Jennifer, you think we could get anything for him?" They both turn to look at Jennifer, Stiles' hand resting protectively on Liam's head. Jennifer hums, pretending to study him for a long moment before answering.

"If he's any good on a unicycle, I'll bet you could get a whole peanut for him," she muses. Liam scowls, shoving Stiles' hand away and moving out of his reach should he decide to tickle him. "Why don't you go find the others? Liam and I will be along in a moment." Stiles looks to Liam, his smile fading.

 _Send up the alarm if she tries anything, Lee_. Liam dips his head in a subtle nod to show he heard, his attention turning back to the dollhouse. Stiles smiles again so Jennifer doesn't suspect anything, heading out of the room. Distantly, he can hear Jennifer humming an old song, something about traveling and moonlight. It's not until Stiles is out of earshot that Liam stretches out his ability to let him hear what Jennifer's whispering in his ear.

" _Are you holding the doors and windows closed? It's what the house wants you to do, isn't it? You just go right on doing it and soon I'll take that dollhouse down and you can play with it all you want. In fact, we'll play with it together. We have all the time in the world."_

Stiles follows the sound of talking into the billiards room, taking in Jackson's missing fingers with only a faint lurch of his stomach. He hasn't eaten anything today, so there's nothing to come up anyway. The others glance up as he sits across from them, a grim set to his mouth.

"We've got a problem," he murmurs.

"No shit," Jackson snaps, holding up his injured hand. "The house is trying to kill us!" Stiles meets Derek's stare, realization making the other man hunch in on himself like a little boy who's about to get in trouble. Jackson looks between them and then back to Stiles, frowning. "What? What is it?"

"Jennifer just told Lee to keep the house locked up tight."

"So tell him not to."

"It's not that easy," Jordan sighs. "Liam's under Corinne's influence, she's tapped into his power. She'll ensure the house remains locked up until all of us have fallen victim to it. We're trapped." The psychics look around suddenly, each of them tilting their heads this way and that as though they're hearing something. "Oh, wonderful."

"The whispers are getting louder now. I hate the whispering."

"Jennifer's got some psychic abilities of her own," Derek says after a moment, when all of them have relaxed again. "It's not much, usually just spotting dead people that disappear between one blink and the next. I think…. I think she's the one that's doing all the whispering."

"She is," Melissa confirms. "I heard her earlier, right before we found out about poor Duke." A chorus of rasping _caws_ starts up outside, drawing Derek and Jordan over to the window. They beat on the glass and yell at the birds eating Deucalion, only relaxing when the crows fly off.

"Anybody got any ideas on how to get out of here?" He and Jordan turn to face the room, but no one has any ideas to offer up. The only one Stiles can think of involves knocking his brother out and he'd rather not give the kid brain damage if he can help it. Maybe the doors will open when Liam falls asleep tonight. Derek scowls and slams his shoulder against the window, the glass remaining intact.

"That's not going to work and you know it," Jordan says softly. Derek sighs, leaning his back against the window.

"This place has always wanted me, I found that out when I was eight. I should have stayed away."

"Why didn't you?"

"Because Jennifer needs someone to watch out for her so she doesn't go floating off into the big nowhere. I mean…. Christ, they're back again." They start beating at the windows again, which they continue to do for the better part of the afternoon. Stiles, growing tired of the noise and the scent of blood, follows Melissa into the kitchen.

"I thought I could make us some comfort food," Melissa explains. "Macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, pie." The thought of food makes Stiles want to hurl, but he pastes on a tired smile and helps out. He's a terrible cook at the best of times, but handing out ingredients is easy. "What are you thinking about?"

"I don't know," Stiles says honestly. "Nothing and everything all at once." He passes Melissa some sliced strawberries to put on top of the cake. She arranges them skillfully until they resemble flowers atop a dollop of whipped cream. It's all homemade, they'd found the strawberries in the solarium and decided to use them without telling the others where they came from.

"Were you perhaps thinking of a certain young man with brown hair and a charming little cheek dimple?" Stiles' face grows hot as he glances away, but he can't help his smile. "He likes you, Stiles. Once we get out of here, you should ask him out."

"What if he thinks I'm just asking to be friends?" Melissa snorts and bumps him with her shoulder.

"Men tend to be as observant as a brick wall. You got to walk right up to them, ask them out in clear words, and then pray that it sinks in that you actually want to date them. Oh, I should make some iced tea." Melissa shuffles over to the cabinet, digging around until she finds some tea bags. "Everyone likes iced tea."

"Liam can't have any tonight. Any amount of sugar after five tends to make him bounce off the walls."

"Noted."

The smell of cooking food eventually has everyone in their group wandering into the kitchen, their bellies rumbling. Liam eyes the pie like Sméagol eyed the Ring and Stiles pushes it back out of his reach. He scowls, but he doesn't throw a tantrum for once.

"This is excellent," Derek says around a mouthful of food. "You're officially my favorite person, Melissa." Melissa grins indulgently, patting Derek's cheek as she passes. They've all pulled chairs up around the table that Jennifer had sat on yesterday afternoon, eating with a cheerful chatter to keep the dark thoughts at bay. When the food's been finished and the dishes washed, they all retire to the billiards room. The lights go out soon afterwards, plunging the house into an unstable darkness.

Liam and Jennifer settle down in the parlor, but the psychic link is open between the Stilinskis and Liam is ready to sound the alarm at a moment's notice. While his brother's still relaxed, Stiles curls up in an armchair with a flashlight and his battered copy of _Inkspell_. He makes a note to buy a new copy soon, a nice back-up just in case his scotch-taping skills fail him.

He's not sure how long he's been reading when Derek rises and walks out of the room, squeezing his shoulder on the way out. Stiles watches him go, eyes trailing down his back and to his butt—a very nice sight he recommends everyone to see. Melissa clears her throat and Stiles' eyes are back on the book when Derek pauses to look at them over his shoulder.

"I'm gonna go check on Jennifer and Liam," he says. Stiles can feel Derek's eyes on him, drilling a hole into the back of his head, but he doesn't volunteer to tag along. Liam's fine and he'd rather not spend much time in the crazy bitch's presence. When Derek's out of earshot, he sets the book on the side table and turns off his flashlight.

"Have you jumped his bones yet," Jordan asks.

"Give me time," Stiles says with a wicked smile.

"Anybody got any drugs," Jackson asks, sprawled out on the only couch with his feet in Melissa's lap. She'd insisted on it, examining his swollen ankle once his hand had stopped bleeding. "I'm gonna need to be very high if we're discussing Stiles' sex life."

"You're just jealous." But he grabs his duffle all the same, rooting around through it until he finds what he's looking for. "I've got some Oxy. The prescription is old, but it'll knock you on your ass."

"Why do you have Oxy?"

"I don't sleep well and Oxy works wonders." He passes the bottle over to Melissa, letting her dole out whatever dose she thinks is appropriate. Stiles makes another note to hit up his dealer when he gets out of here. They all glance up again as Derek rejoins them, Liam and Jennifer following.

"You got any nail polish in there?"

"No, why? Have a sudden need for a manicure?" He means it as a joke, but then he sees the way Jordan's gone stiff as he bends over the pool table to take a shot. For the first time all evening, the ball misses the pocket.

"We could pour some of it into a handkerchief and make Liam breathe it." The whole room is thick with a growing tension, clouds of it washing over them until they're all ready for something to happen. This isn't from a build-up of psychic abilities, it's just good old fashioned anger.

"Talk about hurting my brother again and Corinne won't have to be the bitch you're worried about." Stiles can feel the anger rushing through him faster than any drug he's taken, his vision growing sharp for an instant. There's a pulse, a faint pop somewhere inside him, and then a scratch appears across one of Jackson's cheeks. "Do you understand?"

"Yes…." Jackson looks shaken, most of their group does, but not Derek. Psychic abilities run wild in the Stilinski family, Stiles' doesn't present itself often enough to be of any use, but it's a good weapon when he needs it. If Jackson makes a move toward Liam, Stiles will toss his entitled ass out a window. Instead of that, though, Jackson turns his verbal assault on Jennifer. "Are you having a good time over there, Professor?"

"What," Jennifer asks, distracted. Her eyes haven't moved from the spot Liam's taken up on the floor.

"Are you enjoying the idea of visiting your former department head in the local nut-barn?" When he doesn't get a rise out of her, Jackson talks to the room as a whole. "The house will try and take us tonight, one by one or all together."

"Oh, stop being so unpleasant," Melissa says, looking fed-up. "We all know you've had an accident—"

"An accident?" He sits up a little at that, a dog latching onto a bone. "That's right, I had an accident." Jackson's laugh is as awful as the rest of him and some distant, dark part of Stiles hopes he dies. "Well, I know something about our reporter friend. I'd tell you but every time I talk something _unpleasant_ comes out. Jordan can be the bearer of bad news this time."

Jordan straightens up, setting the pool cue aside as he faces the group. He looks nervous for the first time since Stiles met him, fingers tapping against green velvet. _Dear Fellow Traveler_ , he realizes. The song seems to have gotten into all their heads this weekend.

"The Mirror Library, right," he checks, continuing at Jackson's nod. "I'm afraid Mister Raeken is Echo House's latest victim. It seems he dragged David Whittemore into the library this afternoon and made him watch as he hung himself from the chandelier. After that, I'm not sure what happened to Argent or David. Do you have any idea?"

"None whatsoever, thanks for asking," Jackson grumbles. "They're running somewhere around this stupid place."

" _Black skies changed into blue and my love is so wise and so pretty, but tonight I still dream of you_ ," Liam sings in his high, childish voice. " _Dear fellow traveler under the moon, I think I'm growing weary and I'm hoping you'll come soon_." Derek smiles as he settles down beside Liam, ruffling his hair playfully. Liam doesn't even seem to notice, singing as he plays with his dominoes.

"You know, I can't help but be curious about something, Jennifer," Jordan says after a few minutes have passed. Truth be told, given that the sun has already gone down, it could have been anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour. He's given up playing pool, but he's got the cue ball in his hand. "Did you always view us as sacrifices or did you shove that possibility to the furthest corner of your mind and carry on like it was any given Sunday?"

"I don't know what you're—"

"Don't play the part of a fool, it doesn't suit you. Did you have any sort of backup plan in place in case you didn't get any results? What if this place really was the dead cell you promised it to be? What if Echo House is the paranormal version of the Energizer Bunny and it just keeps growing and growing and growing—"

"Stop it!" Jennifer's sudden shout has Stiles jumping, his head snapping up as he turns his full attention to the conversation. "Stop it," Jennifer repeats, softer. "If I'd known you were crazy, then I would have hired someone else for this trip." Except Jordan is the sanest person in the room and the unhinged smile Jennifer turns on everyone else only seems to confirm that. "D'you see how crazy he is?" She goes to set her hands on Derek's shoulders, but jerks back when Jordan slams the little white ball down on the pool table.

"I'm a mind-reader and that's why you chose me. Now sit down!" Jennifer drops on command, staring, wide-eyed, as Jordan kneels beside her leather armchair. "Echo House will never give you what you want. Corinne Hale designed it to break hearts as hers was broken, to hurt as she was hurt."

"Then we have to leave before it—"

"What," Jordan asks, cutting Melissa off. "Kills us? A real death would be too merciful. If we die here, then the house will only use us as batteries until all the psychic power we have has run down. The only way we're leaving here is if we can find out what's keeping the doors and windows locked."

"Unpleasant Man strikes again," Jackson grouses. "The kid is keeping us locked in. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Corinne's using him to keep us here, she's whispering in his ear that this is all for the best. He doesn't understand that Corinne's lying to him. Jennifer does, though, she's always known and that's why she wanted Liam here in the first place."

"He's right." Jordan rises and puts some space between him and Jennifer, silently urging Liam and Derek to do the same. "You've got enough sensitive equipment here to pick up any sort of phenomenon, yet you still wanted psychics. What can we tell you that all your tools can't, Jennifer?"

"You're all nuts," Jennifer states. She laughs, but it comes out too loud in the stifling quiet, unhinged.

"You said during your lecture that what we'd be doing was essentially applying electricity to the muscles of a dead frog, but it's more like the lightning strike that brought Frankenstein's monster to life. Liam's been the one to keep the ball going, but it was Derek that got it rolling in the first place."

"Derek? He's about as psychic as a ham sandwich."

"Please be quiet, Jennifer." Jennifer stands up with righteous fury etched across her face and in the baring of her teeth.

"Don't you dare tell me to shut up—"

"He asked you to be quiet," Stiles says, leaning forward to rest his arms on his thighs. "Why don't you go ahead and do that before I give you a scratch that matches Jackson's?" In a scathing voice usually reserved for high school bullies, he adds," You could be twinsies."

"Everyone has some psychic capacity, Jennifer," Jordan continues. "I've read your books and articles, you used to know that." Jennifer drops back into her chair, Massaging her temples. "I also know that Argent isn't the only imagination-challenged idiot that you've had to deal with, but you've become blinded and misguided."

"I have not become _blinded_ ," Jennifer denies.

"Whatever Derek's psychic ability in the outside world, here in Echo House it's amplified to the power of ten because he is Corinne's blood. He's the one this house really wants so that it has the complete set. He's the last of the Hales."

"Last time I checked, I'm not the one keeping the doors and windows shut," Derek protests, but it sounds weak.

"True as that may be, Corinne's still using you the way she is Liam. You must at least sense it."

"Well, I don't!"

Derek's world does the spin he's come to associate with Echo House, dumping him back into the body of his younger self. In the memory, he has no idea that Stiles has caught him as he tipped over, doesn't register the heady smell of his cologne. All he smells now is sawdust, the air so thick with it that he's scared he'll suffocate. He's at the foot of those impossible stairs again, watching a woman in white pick up a tin of dominoes from one of the steps. She'd been at the top of the stairs last time, but now she's more than halfway down them and he realizes the sawdust smell is coming from her.

" _Hello, Derek_ ," she greets, face hidden by a white fan.

"Mama," he asks, because he's eight and all he wants is his mama.

" _No, Der, look."_ The fan collapses on itself to reveal a fresh-faced woman in her twenties, dark hair swept off her face in an elegant bun, lips stained a dark red that reminds him of blood or the stained glass setting this sepia-toned world on fire. The woman smiles as she brings the fan up to cover the tin, letting it collapse again to reveal the dominoes have transformed into a hammer. _"Would you like to help me build, Derek? I'll show you how_."

"Derek," Mama yells from somewhere downstairs. "Derek, where are you? It's time to leave!" Mama's voice breaks the spell and he shuffles backwards without taking his eyes off the woman, off _Corinne_. He knows her name now because he's not eight anymore.

" _Go to her, but come back. Come back and build with us, Der_."

Derek comes back to himself, the scent of sawdust replaced by something spicy. It takes him a good minute to realize the spicy something is wafting off of Stiles, who's also doing a damn fine job of cradling him against his chest like Derek's some swooning maiden. He's honestly tempted to fake being asleep just to stay in those arms a while longer.

"Are you alright," Stiles asks, his arms a secure band around Derek's chest.

"Keep holding me like this and I'll be perfect," he says with a wry smile. Stiles chokes out a laugh and swats at his chest, but he doesn't let go. That's what Derek's been aching for his entire life, someone that won't drop him when shit hits the fan.

"You were lost in that memory again," Jordan says. "Lost in a room with colored light." Derek's smile fades and he cuts his gaze to where Jordan is kneeling beside him. If he keeps this up, he might just check that threesome off his bucket list.

"That wasn't real, it's just the house trying to get to me."

"Are you sure about that?"

"Not even remotely, but it's all I've got right now."

"Then let's stick with what we know," Jackson snaps. "Liam's conscious and the doors are locked, Liam's unconscious and the doors are unlocked. Knock him out or sing him a lullaby, I don't give a damn, just get us out of here."

"No one is going to hurt this child," Jennifer hisses, sliding to the floor in order to wrap her arms around Liam. It would almost seem sweet if the hold itself wasn't so possessive, the gleam in her eyes not so manic.

"Of course we're not," Melissa soothes. She's wearing down, though, they all are at this point. Derek's certain Jackson will try to kill Liam if those doors don't open soon. Liam, still lost in his own world, smiles contentedly as he surrounds the dollhouse with his dominoes.

"And there's the rub," Jordan announces sadly. "We're in trouble, ladies and gentlemen, very big trouble."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "Every man or woman who loves Him, they hate Him too, because He's a hard God, a jealous God, He Is, what He Is, and in this world He's apt to repay service with pain while those who do evil ride over the roads in Cadillac cars. Even the joy of serving Him is a bitter joy."


	11. The Lord Provides Strength

Melissa is almost asleep when she hears the shifting of cloth, her half-lidded gaze falling on where Jackson looks to be sitting up. Struggling to, anyway, since he only has one uninjured hand to push himself up with.

"Don't even think about it," she mumbles drowsily. Jackson falls back on the couch with a scowl, yanking their shared comforter back over him. "Liam couldn't hear you even if what you were planning to say made any sense to him."

"He's not in the room with us half the time," Jordan agrees. "I can't see his thoughts."

"They're too high," Derek adds. It's like a melding of minds, the psychics' thoughts spread around the room and shared by all. Except Liam's thoughts, of course, his are way up out of Melissa's reach.

"Like Rapunzel in her tower, though her hair's been cut too short to be of any use in climbing." Melissa can see Derek's thoughts echoing around in the empty space, jumbled like they've hit a wall and fallen to pieces, but then Liam is glancing up at Derek just long enough for Melissa to realize what's happened. He can make his thoughts go up high, he can reach Liam.

 _Think you can convince him to let us go?_ Derek glances over at her with some shock, still unused to flexing his psychic muscles. He gives a curt shake of his head and Melissa sighs, having been expecting as much. The floorboards creak when she stands up, one of the flashlights in hand as she heads for the door of the billiards room.

"Where are you going, Melissa," Jordan asks.

"I thought some iced tea would be nice," she answers, pausing halfway to the door.

"You shouldn't go alone," Derek reminds her.

"I'm not, I've got God with me." He looks almost panicked, the expression only deepening when Melissa nearly blinds herself by having the flashlight facing her as she switches it on. "Don't worry, I'll be careful." She leaves without another word, her knees aching in the unholy cold that's overtaken the house.

The kitchen is just down the hall, situated halfway between the billiards room and the parlor. It's a short walk, maybe twenty feet in all, but it feels much longer with only a flashlight to guide her. The hall stretches out forever while the shadows seethe where her light doesn't reach.

"Oh, this was a bad idea," she mumbles, looking around. "God better be getting all my prayers tonight or I'm slugging Him after I die." She looks back at the closed door of the billiards room, tempted to retreat gracefully. The thing is, Melissa has never been graceful and she still wants that damn glass of tea. Squaring her jaw, she marches down the hallway (and by _march_ she means _runs like a sissy_ ).

She leaves the kitchen doors open just in case she needs to holler for backup, shuffling slowly across the tiles. Fortunately, the refrigerator is against the right wall, which means it's only five feet from the doorway. Unfortunately, the door of the wine cellar is wide open. Is a glass of tea really worth being bludgeoned to death with a wine bottle?

Apparently the answer to that is a resounding _yes_ , because she goes for it. Melissa takes long strides as she passes the wine cellar, yanking the fridge door open to act as a buffer between herself and whatever eldritch horror is lurking in the deepening shadows. She takes out the pitcher and sets it on the small table behind her, then realizes she has to pass the cellar again to get a glass. Oh, she really doesn't want to do that.

She has to shut the fridge door to reach the glasses and she blames the loss of light on what happens next. She's just passing the cellar when something lumbers out of it, something tall and bulky that's screaming like a banshee as it tackles Melissa. It settles on her belly, the moonlight casting strange shapes over its pale face.

"You killed my boy," the thing screeches. Its talons dig into Melissa's shoulders and raise her from the ground only to slam her back against it. "You killed my Jackson!" _This is Mister Whittemore_ , Melissa realizes. He slams Melissa against the floor again, his long fingers wrapping around her throat.

David's features are thrown into sharp focus as a beam of light hits her, momentarily blinding the both of them.

"I'm afraid I'm gonna need you to let my friend go," Jordan says. He sounds so polite that Melissa tries to laugh, the sound coming out garbled as David's fingers tighten. David howls again, then tenses up suddenly, falling to the side in unconsciousness. Melissa coughs as Jordan helps her up, spotting the pool ball he must have pegged David with. "Are you alright?"

"If I could actually breathe, I'd kiss you," she says. Her voice comes out strained and it hurts to speak, but at least that means she's still alive. "Will David be alright?" Jordan's laugh is as comforting as anything, washing over her with a sense of calm trailing after it.

"You really are a saint, you know that?"

"Go check on him." Jordan gives her a sloppy salute, stepping around her to kneel at David's side. "How is he? Is he still alive?"

"Pulse is strong and steady. Of course, living with Jackson means you must always have good blood pressure or you'll croak after a week of dealing with him. Two days in and I'm reaching that point." He means it as a joke but it falls flat. "Sorry, I joke when I'm nervous."

"I do a shot of whiskey when I'm nervous." She leans against the wall, trying to get her breath back. She isn't as young as she used to be, women her age don't just bounce back after being strangled. She's going to milk this incident when she gets home. Maybe Scott will let her help design Allison's engagement ring. "We can't let Jackson see him like this."

"You're right." Jordan grunts a little as he straightens, rolling his shoulders. "There's rope in the entry hall. I'll go fetch it and we can keep him tied up until we find a way out of here. Maybe by then he won't be so…."

"So homicidal?" He nods with a dry smile, then he's stalking off and Melissa is alone with David. She purses her lips, giving David a light kick and relaxing when the man doesn't move. "I'm gonna get drunk when I go home, David." Until then, she'll have to settle on tea because she's never been a wine drinker. She grabs a glass from the cabinet and pours some of the tea in it, making sure she sidesteps both David and that damn cellar.

"Seriously," Jordan asks when he rejoins her.

"I wanted my tea and, dammit, I'm going to have a glass of it." She nods at David, raising her brows. "Make yourself useful." She's smiling even as she says it and Jordan returns her smile in kind. It lights up his eyes like a neon sign and she'd live for that smile if she could.

"Fine, but only because you asked so nicely." He kneels down beside David again, tying him up to ensure he doesn't get loose and attack anyone else. David stirs about halfway through the process and he's trying to escape by the time Jordan's done. "Pour me a glass, please. This is tiring work, being a knight in shining armor." Melissa laughs and it comes easier this time, though her throat is still sore. She imagines it'll be sore for at least a few days.

"Are you sure the ropes will hold him," she asks, handing Jordan a glass of tea. She would have loved a wedge of lemon to go with it, but their lone lemon had been used in an attempt to wake Liam up. It's still in the parlor and Melissa isn't brave enough to walk down there to get it.

"Jackson gave me the impression that David's interests run more toward the New York Stock Exchange rather than amazing escapes." They drink in comfortable silence for a moment, each of them gazing around the room. There's something else lurking nearby, Melissa can feel it as a tingle in her fingertips.

"Thank you for coming after me, Jordan. Coming in here alone was stupid of me, but Jackson was working my last nerve. If I'd have stayed in there with him much longer, I would have—" She cuts herself off, but Jordan can read the violence in her mind.

"He has that effect on everyone. Look at his father." David Whittemore is wriggling against his bindings, toppling over onto his side for his effort. "At least now we don't have to worry about him. All we have left to do is find Professor Argent and get out of here."

"We could tie Argent and David to the top of the van like hunting trophies." Jordan's laugh is bright and infectious, bubbling out of his chest. "What do we do with him in the meantime? We can't bring him into the billiards room or it'll set Jackson off."

"Then we'll leave David in here." Jordan shrugs, wandering over to the windows that overlook the solarium. Melissa hadn't been brave enough to take a look for herself, afraid of what might be waiting for her on the other side of the glass. "Melissa, come look at this." Her feet refuse to move for a second, but then they're carrying her across the room faster than she'd like.

"What is it?"

"Look at how healthy everything is." The plants are lively and full of color—greens and pinks and reds. There's nothing dead to be seen out in the greenhouse, even the furniture has been righted and repaired.

"We're doing that, aren't we?"

"Echo House's feeding off us. Do you feel it?" Melissa nods, wrapping her arms around herself. The feeling is like being drained, a cup of water with a small puncture at the bottom that causes all the water to slowly leak out. Only instead of water, it's all of Melissa's energy.

"Derek—"

"Derek couldn't hold us by himself. Not with me, you, and Jackson working against him. The problem is Liam." There's a pause in the conversation, each of them thinking of the sweet little boy who doesn't even know what he's doing is wrong. They might have to hurt him to get out and Melissa doesn't want that. "I could hurt him," Jordan says, reading her mind. "I have the power, but I'm afraid I don't have the will. He's too sweet."

David begins to scream behind them, a string of gibberish as his struggles increase. He's looking into the wine cellar and Melissa moves to look as well, but she finds nothing beyond a few cobwebs and shelves full of wine.

"What do you see, Mister Whittemore," Jordan asks, looking around as well. There's nothing visible, but there's a feeling of dread spilling into the room. Melissa can sense the way it's rolling in, ground fog that makes her break out in a cold sweat. She shuts the cellar door, but the dread doesn't leave her.

"Do you feel it, Jordan," Melissa asks, leaning against the door as though some invisible foe is pushing to get out. "It's so cold all of a sudden."

"I feel it." Jordan lets out a shuddering breath, brows drawn down over his eyes. "We need to leave now, Mister Whittemore, but we'll fetch you soon." David doesn't take the news well, trying to kick at them as they pass him. "It's alright, you'll be perfectly safe now that the cellar door is closed."

"Something's happened to him. He was so chatty yesterday afternoon."

"Echo House happened to him. Come on, let's head back to the others." Melissa puts a small pile of dishcloths under David's head to serve as a pillow of sorts. It's all she can do to make the man comfortable right now. "The man's fried," Jordan says when she joins him in the doorway.

"That's not very nice."

"But it's true." She can't argue with that, so she doesn't. Beyond the kitchen, the hallway has changed. It's subtle and Melissa doesn't notice at first, not until they come to a bend where the billiards room should be. "I think we made a wrong turn."

"I think you're stating the obvious." They follow the bend and find themselves in an unfinished part of the house, piles of wood lining the hall while the walls show the bare bones, dusty bricks only half-covered by plywood. Moonlight comes in through gaps in the ceiling, creating a dappled light along floors absent any carpet or tiling. "We shouldn't go down there."

"Now who's stating the obvious?" His voice lacks its usual humor and that, more than anything, sets Melissa on edge. "Unless you want to take your chances back in the kitchen, we've nowhere to go except forward."

"Maybe we can talk David into playing charades." But they don't turn back and Melissa will regret this choice later on. They go forward, stepping over discarded tool chests and chunks of insulation. They pause next to a horse, Jordan picking up a hammer that had been left there by a carpenter long since dead.

"Beacon Hills Livery, 1924," he reads, the words branded into the wooden handle. "It looks brand new." He sets it aside and they continue down the impossibly long hall. "You'd think after all these years, Corinne would have had Echo House eat at least one halfway decent carpenter."

"Do you think we'll ever find the others?"

"Of course we will. I promise we'll find them and I never break a promise." They take another turn to the left, Jordan wrapping a protective arm around Melissa's shoulders. She thinks that he does it more because he's frightened than for her benefit, but she'll take it all the same. "So, what are you doing here?"

"Aside from getting the shit scared out of me?"

"Yes, aside from that." She doesn't answer right away, too busy dodging a rat that goes speeding past her. "Melissa?"

"My husband said I was a compulsive quitter. He said that I keep starting things so I could stop them." Rafael McCall had been quite adamant that she found a project to keep her occupied, a puzzle to put together or a new recipe to perfect. She had hated him for saying that. "Naturally, I divorced him." Jordan laughs, bending down to press a kiss against the top of her head.

"I can't say I blame you." The hall ends after another turn, a door their only way forward. Jordan moves slightly in front of Melissa, opening the door and bringing his flashlight up as a club in case something is waiting for them on the other side of it. There's nothing at first, just the Perspective Hallway they'd seen yesterday.

"How on earth did we end up on the third floor?" Jordan doesn't get to respond to her question and Melissa doesn't remember asking it later, too focused on the strange lump under the hall runner. It stays there until it seems to register their presence, then it's lurching forward with the sound of barking hounds.

"Run, Melissa, run!" He urges her back down the hall—she doesn't remember them stepping over the threshold, but they had—both of them racing back to the door. Melissa doesn't want to look back because she knows she's dead the second she does, so she keeps facing forward and begins to pray. "Keep going!"

"Not without you!" Jordan shoves her through the doorway and slams the door shut, keeping himself between her and the creature. She yanks on the knob, but it refuses to turn and she's certain that Jordan is holding it from the other side to keep her safe. "Jordan, get out of there!" There's a sick sound of tearing flesh and Jordan's cut-off scream, then a heavy silence laced with grief. "No!" Melissa forces the door open, but finds only Jordan's fallen flashlight waiting for her. The hall runner is smooth again, absent strange lumps or even a speckle of blood. Aside from the flashlight, there's no sign Jordan had ever been here.

_Not even a lock of hair or a thread from her dress._

"Jordan? Jordan, can you hear me?" Her voice echoes back to her, bouncing off the walls and fake doors until she's sure the sound of it will drive her around the bend. It's not until she's been quiet a minute and the words are still echoing that she realizes the house has started to whisper.

" _Come with us_ ," a woman's voice coos. _"I'll teach you how to live forever. You don't even need to drink a potion_." Spindly fingers curve over Melissa's shoulder and she can't help the scream that tears its way out of her chest. It rips up through her throat and leaves the taste of copper heavy on her tongue, far louder than Marin's insistent whispering.

Melissa sprints down the hall, skidding around corners that didn't used to exist until she comes to a clumsy halt in front of a pair of doors. They're plain compared to the others in the house, obviously not meant to be seen by guests. She tilts her head to the side, drawn in close by the faint whispers on the other side.

" _Come see_ ," Corinne's saying. _"Let me tell you what really happened to my dear husband_. _Help us_."

"No," Melissa says, stubbornness lending her voice a hard quality. "I won't help you! You're killing my friends." The doors move with a startling swiftness and a sound like fingers brushing wood, appearing right in front of Melissa. It's unnatural, but nothing about this damn house is natural and she doubts it'll start acting properly any time soon. "No!"

" _Help us or die_." Melissa shakes her head, taking off down another hall as the doors swing open. She doesn't look back, so she doesn't see the emaciated form of Corinne Hale in her famous white dress, skin pulled tight across sharp cheekbones.

Melissa scampers down the stairs and through Corinne's joke office, certain that the next hall will take her to the ground floor again. If she can just get to the first level, she can raise the alarm. If she can find the others, she might be able to live through the night.

The next set of doors are ornate, dark wood engraved with tall trees and smiling children. She shoulders them open and slides across a glass floor that reflects the beam of her flashlight a thousand times. Seeing the Mirror Library in the dark, alone, is far worse than when she'd pressed against Jordan's side as little Cora Hale drifted out of the floor.

"Oh, son of a bitch," she hisses. Still, there's nowhere else for her to go, so she keeps moving forward. She's nearly halfway across the room when a thought has her frozen. _Theo Raeken hung himself in here_. And aren't those his feet she sees reflecting in the floor, dangling and lifeless? Her flashlight trails up along jean-clad legs and an unmoving chest, all the way to the rope tied around this poor boy's throat. Pinned to his shirt is a piece of paper, _mommy i'm so scared_ written on it in bold, black ink.

Melissa doesn't scream again, she doesn't think her throat could handle it, but she tucks tail and turns back the way she came. She'll gladly deal with Corinne if it means not being in the same room as a corpse. The house, unfortunately, seems to have grown tired of her racing feet.

The glass under her turns liquid, sloshing around her hips and clinging to her legs like it's trying to stop her from moving. _I might die like this_ , she thinks. _Scotty will never know what happened because the floor is going to swallow me up_. The thought of her son spurs her on. She'd made a promise, goddammit, she _promised_ to be there for Scott's wedding and she doesn't break promises.

" _Hurry, Melissa_ ," Jordan's urging from the doorway. _"I won't have control for much longer_." She lurches forward, closing the ten feet between them and taking Jordan's outstretched hand. She doesn't stop to think this might be a trick, not when the panic in Jordan's face looks so genuine. He pulls her out of the liquid glass and gently pushes her ahead of him in a hall that hadn't existed a moment ago.

"Where do I go? How can I help you?"

" _There's no help for me, I'm afraid._ " Jordan looks around, brows creasing as the whispering starts again. She wonders if the voices are plain for him now that he's dead. _"Go to the attic. Find out what happened to Peter and then Corinne might let you rejoin the others._ "

"Is that you or the house talking?" Jordan's smile is a shadow of its former brightness, but it's no less comforting.

" _Does it matter? Up is down in this crazy house_." She studies him a moment longer, imprinting his face and that wonderful smile to memory before pulling away. She's halfway up a new set of stairs before she realizes that Jordan hadn't been cold like the other ghosts. He was, and would always be, warm.

Melissa traverses two other hallways, both short, before she finds the door that leads to the attic. This one is plain, too, the top of it cut at odd angles to fit in the sloping roof of a tower. Is this the Tower Folly? Is this where Peter Hale went flying out a window?

The door opens to a short flight of stairs and then she's in the attic proper. The room is wide and spacious, no impossible stairs with women in white waiting for her. That had only been for Derek, it seems.

Melissa finds a room filled with forty years' worth of junk, all of it covered in a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. She gets the distinct feeling that the ghosts rarely gather here. Near one end of the room is a large painting half-hidden by Corinne's wedding dress and a sheet. Melissa pushes them aside to see the full picture, Corinne and Peter Hale in their wedding finery with pleasant smiles.

The vision sweeps over Melissa's eyes before she's ready for it, dropping her into a world without color. She's still in the attic, in the same place she'd been standing, only there's less clutter and no dust to be found. The painting is gone as well, but she assumes it's hanging down in the parlor above the mantle.

She turns slowly, unsurprised to find a couple standing near a window, painted in colors of red and vibrant green as the sun filters in through the stained-glass mural of a rose set into the window frame. Peter Hale isn't an impressive man, rather short and stocky with a bearded jaw and groping hands. His companion, however, is the most beautiful woman Melissa has ever seen; her brown hand stands out against the white of Peter's cheek, her eyes alight with mischief and her smile sharp as cut-glass. She's leaning into Peter's embrace, welcoming it even. If Melissa didn't see the disgust making Marin's nose twitch, she'd assume the woman was enjoying this.

The stairs don't creak as Corinne comes up them, still wearing her nightgown with her dark hair hanging down her back. Marin smiles when she spots her, tilting her head back to reveal the column of her throat. Peter groans, attaching his lips to the tendon there.

"Is this what you do when you think I'm sleeping, Peter," Corinne asks, calm and detached. Peter, on the other hand, jumps as though he's been electrocuted. He doesn't look guilty, but he _does_ look like the mouse a cat has just cornered.

"Corinne, I can explain," he says, stumbling over his words. "She enticed me." He shoves at Marin, but the woman clings to him with a vicious grin that bares her teeth.

"You can explain it? Can you? Explain it to your whores down in hell!" Corinne's standing next to him in three long strides, her and Marin working together to shove him backwards. Melissa doubts Peter even knows what's happening until he's already out the window, shattered glass following him down to their perfectly manicured lawn.

Melissa comes back to herself with a snap, her head aching and her index finger smeared with dust. Across from her, written in her own hand over the glass protecting the portrait, are five words.

 _NOT SUICIDE MURDER CORINNE MARIN_.

David Whittemore is normally a patient man, if a little high-strung. He recognizes his faults, even tries to deal with them on occasion, but no one can blame him for his fit of temper. His son is dead, that reporter is dead, that professor is probably dead, but David's not going to shed any tears over that jackass.

He's not sure how long it's been since he was left alone in the kitchen, but he's just about got a hand free. The skin around it has been rubbed raw and he's pretty sure his thumb dislocated around five minutes ago, but he's almost got it. If he can get his hands free, he can kill all the people responsible for his son's death.

"Come on," he says into the gag. "Come on." He can feel the rope slipping, but he doesn't get the chance to celebrate his new freedom. A shadow falls over him, lean and tall, its teeth clicking together. It's the woman he'd seen in the cellar, her leathery skin looking even darker in contrast with the red headscarf she's wearing. "No! Get away from me!"

" _Hush now, Papa_ ," the woman says, bending over him. _"I know exactly what you need_." The woman grabs David's feet and drags him into the cellar, his head bouncing off the concrete step. David kicks as well as he can, using his hands to beat at the woman. _"Don't fight me now. I'm going to help you stay with your boy forever_."

"He's dead, Jackson's dead!"

" _Not yet, but he will be before the sun rises. Don't you wanna stay with him?"_ David feels himself go limp, all the fight draining out of him as the woman caresses his cheek. That is what David wants, what he's wanted since the moment his son was put in his arms. Jackson had screamed so loudly, but he'd quieted the moment David took him. He'd looked up at his papa like he was Jackson's whole world.

"Make it quick?"

" _Of course."_

Maybe it's because she's hyper aware of her surroundings or maybe it's because she's already been tackled once today, but the second a withered form comes crashing out of the portrait, Melissa greets it with her fist in its face. The creature drops to the side with a shriek, lying face down and unmoving in a pristine white dress.

"Go fuck yourself," she snarls down at the creature. Melissa spins when she hears footsteps on the stairs, ready for another fight despite her sore knuckles. She damn near takes Derek's head off, she would have if he hadn't ducked and caught her around the waist. "Oh, Jesus, what were you thinking? Don't sneak up on someone in this house!"

"Sorry, I didn't know I was sneaking," Derek says, helping her straighten up again. "Are you okay? Where's Jordan?" It takes every shred of her strength not to collapse, pressing her lips tight together to keep a keening wail from escaping. "Oh no…."

"Hey, who's that," Stiles asks, pointing. Derek follows Stiles' finger to the creature sprawled out on the floor like it never plans to get up again. "Holy shit, is that Corinne? What happened?" Melissa gives a shortened explanation of everything as they head over to the creature and, once she's done, Derek and Stiles are giving her identical bewildered expressions.

"You punched a ghost in the face?" Derek looks to Stiles, gesturing wildly at where Melissa is standing. "Can we adopt her, too?"

"Maybe after we get out of here, babe." Stiles rests his hand on Derek's shoulder and they give each other puppy dog eyes. Normally Melissa would be cooing and squealing with joy, but there's the matter of them being trapped in a fucking murder house, so the joy will have to wait until later. She clears her throat pointedly and the love-sick idiots drop back into the present.

"Did you get a good look at her face?"

"No, I was too concerned with knocking her out before she could tear out my throat," Melissa says dryly. "Why don't you do the honors?" Derek uses his foot to turn the creature over, revealing a person that looks more like an overcooked turkey, but Melissa doubts any turkey in the world has fucking _fangs_ like some kind of vampire. The creature's frame is slightly wrong, withered arm tucked against a too-thin chest.

"It's Aunt Cora."

"Anyone one of you got a cell phone?"

"Yeah, why?" Derek hands her the one that had once belonged to Raeken and Melissa takes a photo of the corpse. As if in protest of anymore photos, Cora's mouth drops open to expel a white vapor; it spills upwards, gathering in a swirling ball before it and the body disappear in a flash of light. When their vision clears again, all that's left behind is Corinne's singed wedding dress. "You guys realize what this means, right? Corinne's still hanging around here like some kind of bat."

"I already punched Cora in the face. Point me at Corinne and I'll give you both a repeat performance." Stiles snorts out a laugh that borders on hysterical, but who can blame him? Melissa is a comedic genius, if she doesn't say so herself. Also, after all the stress they've been under the past two days, laughing feels like the best thing in the world.

"Why'd you want a picture?"

"Jennifer can't get bitchy with us if we have proof of what we just found."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Full chapter title quote: "Blasphemy," she told herself complacently. "The Lord provides strength, not taxicabs."


	12. Love is What Moves the World

" _No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart."_

— **IT, Stephen King**

Jennifer still gets pretty bitchy.

"Let me get this straight," Melissa grouses," you have no problem believing in a haunted house that grows by itself, but you draw the line at Derek's aunt lurking around in dark corners for eighty-four years? I took a picture, Jennifer!" She holds the phone up for emphasis, shaking it in Jennifer's face.

"Pictures can easily be faked."

"How could I fake it? There isn't a computer to be found except for your own and that's password protected!" Melissa jams the phone back in her pocket, pacing the length of the room to keep from doing something she'll regret later. Actually, Derek doubts Melissa would feel any regret if she punched Jennifer in the face. Apparently that's her go-to move. "You know what? _Fine_. Believe what you want to, but don't come crying to me when Marin or Corinne try to suck your blood later on."

"There's a difference between spirits and Bela Lugosi." The argument pauses as the clock strikes nine. It reminds Derek of that old story his father had loved, the one about a plague spreading over the world and a selfish, idiotic Prince that gathered the asymptomatic aristocrats into his castle.

"Thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company," Derek recites. "And, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or meditation." Jennifer doesn't look like she approves, but Derek is beyond caring about such things.

"Is your great grandmother Prospero or the Red Death now?"

"Does it matter? For God's sake, stop being so obtuse!"

"Oh my, that's a dreadfully big word for a college dropout." He's not going to lie, that stings. He knows he's never going to graduate college, but she doesn't have to taunt him about it. He's not fucking stupid.

"What a sharp tongue you have, Grandma," Stiles comments dryly.

"Another country heard from," Jackson says, voice shaking as he grows weaker. He's sitting up now, but he's paler than before and the blood is starting to seep through the dish towel that has replaced Melissa's handkerchief. If he's bleeding again, then Derek doubts he'll last through the night. "I'm curious, Stiles, how often do you fantasize about your brother dying?"

"How often do you fantasize about your father dying?" Jackson looks taken aback by that, like he hadn't expected Stiles to have any fight left in him. Derek doesn't think the urge to fight is ever very far from Stiles Stilinski, especially not when his brother is factored into the equation. "It hurts to have someone talk like that, doesn't it? Maybe think before you speak, you troll."

"Why do you have to act so miserable," Melissa demands, turning to glare at Jackson.

"Because I am miserable, you over-Christianized idiot," Jackson snaps. He shoves the comforter aside and stands up, but Derek steps in front of him before he can take a step toward Liam.

"Go anywhere near that kid and you'll regret it," Derek warns. If anyone in here so much as looks at Liam wrong, Derek will personally kick their asses from here to Kingdom Come.

"Oh, so big and brave, threatening the man with four missing fingers."

"Try to hurt him and I'll cut off the other six." Derek steps closer, really getting in Jackson's face. This close, he can smell the sweat soaking into Jackson's shirt. "Or maybe I'll send you out of the room. I'll bet whatever the house has planned for you is much worse than anything I could come up with." Jackson drops back onto the couch with a sneer that's become familiar these past two days. "That's what I thought, you little bitch."

"Language," Liam sing-songs. He's sitting across from the fireplace, surrounding the Echo House replica with his dominoes. He's been quiet since the others got back, but Derek's sure he knew what had happened to them even before they explained to the others.

"You can say bad words and I can't?" Liam glances over his shoulder, beaming up at Derek.

"Yep."

"Think again, Lee," Stiles says. "I hear you say another bad word and I'll hide your iPod for a week." Liam's grin transforms into a frown so quickly that it almost gives Derek whiplash. He turns back to his dominoes, humming softly. Derek's starting to hate that song about love and dreams. Hammering starts up somewhere above them and it silences the group better than the clock had. "We're running out of time, aren't we?"

"Yeah," Derek nods. "Yeah, we are. Do you think you can convince Liam to let us out?"

"Not a chance. He's too far gone to listen to me. I don't think he really understands what's happening."

"Then how—"

"Could you do it," Melissa asks, hovering near the pool table. She keeps fiddling with the cue ball, the same one Jordan had been handling while he talked to Jennifer. He bets she can feel his presence lingering the same way Derek does.

"Not in here. It's like the house has formed its own little force field around him and I can't get through it." As if in answer, like this house is known to do, a full-on gust of wind blows through the room. Derek can't hear anything over the howling, not the breaking glass of a vase thrown off a side table or the beeping of Jennifer's equipment.

"No change in the temperature readouts," Jennifer's yelling, voice high and panicky. "No changes in any of the readouts! Damn it!" Jackson's up and moving as the others just try to stay upright, a fire poker grasped in his hand as he makes his way toward Liam. "No! Stay away from him!"

Liam turns to glare up at Jackson like he's some monster hiding inside a closet or under the bed. There's more than anger, though, there's a deadly intent that makes the hairs along Derek's nape stand on end. As if guided by a puppet master, the suit of armor across the room begins to move, its hands wrapped tightly around the shaft of an ornamental ax.

"Duck!" Jackson turns at Derek's shout, dropping to the floor a second before the glittering blade sweeps through the air. The armor swings again, embedding the ax deep in the floor barely an inch from Jackson's head. The air settles after that, the suit collapsing into pieces around Jackson. Liam's warning is as clear as glass.

"Holy shit," Jackson breathes. "Holy shit, holy shit…." Liam has turned back to his dominoes, the toys the only thing that matters to him. Derek tries to grasp his thoughts, but they're still too high. _Prospero in his castle_ , he thinks again and Liam shudders.

"Melissa, I think it's your turn to help us out." Derek looks to her even as she flinches back.

"No," she protests. "I can't—"

"We don't have any other options. Everyone else has tried to get us out of this place and now it's your turn to step up to the plate. You can do this." She doesn't look very reassured, but she nods all the same and lets out a heavy sigh. "Atta girl."

"I need markers and some paper."

"I think I saw some in the entrance hall when we first came in." He and Stiles leave to fetch them, Stiles' hand slotting into his own like it belongs there. Derek doesn't intend to give this gift horse a tooth cleaning, simply squeezing Stiles' hand and reveling in the warmth he emits. "You doing okay?"

"As well as can be expected," he shrugs. "I'll be fine."

"Will you, though? Will any of us?"

"We have to be." Stiles grabs up the papers and markers, then they make a fast trip back into the billiards room. Jennifer is ranting when they come back in, pacing the length of the room. Stiles ignores her, handing the paper and markers off to Melissa and watching her settle down across from Liam.

"You have no idea how dangerous this is," Jennifer's saying. Derek gets it, he really does. Automatic writing isn't nearly the safest thing to be doing in an obviously haunted house, but it's the only option they haven't tried. If this doesn't work, then he's not above using Jackson as a battering ram. "You can't interfere with my—"

"This isn't about you," Derek yells. He catches her around the waist when she tries to storm over to Melissa and Liam, spinning her away from them. "This is about getting everyone left out safely!" Melissa is doing a damn fine job of ignoring the unfolding chaos, working silently to get everything organized the way she wants it.

"Would you like to try this with me, Liam," she asks. Liam glances away from the pad of paper in front of him, seeking out Derek's gaze. At Derek's nod, Liam picks up and uncaps a bright orange marker. "Let's do it together, alright?" Liam gives a slight incline of his head that might be a nod, watching curiously as Melissa begins to draw little swirls along the first page. He mimics the motions, his swirls tight and close together.

"You'd better stop," Jennifer says, clutching at Derek's shirt. "The forces of this house will swat you both like flies. I'm warning you."

"Keep going, Lee," Derek encourages when Liam looks at him again.

As he continues to go, the stone flower vases explode in large chunks that scuff the floor in places, a breeze picking back up. It's like the house is starting to fall apart at Liam's silent command. Lightbulbs burst in their sockets, a shower of sparks raining down that burn where they catch the bare skin of Derek's neck. He barely notices it, unable to look away from the sight in front of him; Liam writing with a soft smile curving his lips upwards. He's happy, loves helping people even if no one understands quite how he's doing it. But Derek does, Derek has a direct line to him in this house and Liam is soaking up the praise like a sponge.

"Make him stop," Jennifer screams over the noise. "You're gonna get us all killed!" She tears herself out of Derek's grasp, stumbling and nearly tripping over the rug. Derek ignores her, sending out encouraging thoughts through the psychic link. Liam writes furiously in big, block letters— _OPEN THE DOORS_. The doors in the front hall swing open with a thunderous crash. _OPEN THE WINDOWS_. The glass and sturdy frames of the windows blow out, glass littering the overgrown lawn.

"Keep going, Lee," Stiles shouts. "You've got this!" Jennifer's equipment pops and sizzles, sparks flying over the rug and smoldering.

"Stop it! You're tearing it apart!" Like all the other times before when something happened, things go quiet so suddenly that the lack of noise almost hurts. Papers, the ones they'd brought in and the sheet music from the organ, flutter to the ground around them, covering the floor like feathers.

Derek bolts from the room and skids to a stop in the front hall, letting out a relieved laugh when he finds the doors have actually opened. They can leave now; they can be safe and happy and he can take Stiles out for coffee. Things can be good now. He looks to his right, ready to shout the good news from the rooftops, but cuts himself off before he can try.

Jennifer is striding toward Liam, a screwdriver clutched in her hand that can only be meant for bad things.

"Jennifer," he calls, a warning. "No!" Derek runs back into the room, but Jennifer's already so close and she's shoving Stiles and Melissa out of the way. Jesus, Liam's so _small_. He won't survive this kind of attack. She's three feet away from Liam, the screwdriver raised, when a face made of crackling flames lunges out of the fireplace, forcing her to fall backwards or get burned. She topples to the floor, the sleeves of her sweater burned black where she had protected her face.

"Not there," Jackson chants, leaping off the couch. "Not there, not there!" The face shoots back into the fireplace with a pained shriek, red-gold embers falling across the rug and extinguishing themselves.

Derek hauls Jennifer to her feet again, careful not to touch the burned parts of her forearms.

"Come on, Jennifer, it's time to go," he says gently.

"Go," she asks, suddenly calm. She shoves him away and moves over to her equipment, running her hands reverently over the half-melted plastic and hot metal. "I have a thousand things to do, Derek. I'm not going anywhere." Derek chases after her as the others shuffle out of the room.

"The house is open. We have to leave."

"Then leave and take that traitor with you." He grabs for her arm, content with dragging her out if he has to. Jennifer's always been faster, though, and her slap catches him off guard. She punches him next, rocking his head to the side and sending a dull ache along his jaw. "Get out!"

"Derek, we gotta go," Stiles shouts from the doorway. Derek sends Jennifer one last look, but there's no shred of sanity left to be found. The madness of the house has seeped into her mind, into her bones, and she's as lost as Deucalion or Erica. There's nothing he can do to save her now, so he leaves.

They come into the hall in time to see what used to be David Whittemore shoot out of a mirror, wrapping his thick fingers around Jackson's throat.

" _Come here, Jackson,"_ he yells, the bottom half of him still trapped in the liquefied glass. His free hand wraps around Jackson's wrist, shaking the hand with the missing fingers. _"I wanna see if you've been cleaning your nails! I want to look behind your ears! And what about down there?"_ David sends a pointed glare down at Jackson's crotch before meeting his horrified stare again. _"Have you been doing that nasty thing again? I hear you in your room at night! Papa hears everything!"_

"Help me," he screams, reaching back with his free hand. "For God's sake! Help me!"

"Fight him," Melissa yells back. "For once in your miserable life, fight him!"

"Not there, not there, not there!" David struggles hard to keep his grasp on Jackson even as he weakens and sinks back into the glass.

" _I'll always be there for you, Jackson! Papa will always find you!"_ The glass covers David again and Jackson fights to get his mutilated hand free as the glass starts to harden. Derek runs over to him, grabbing him with both hands and pulling him out just in time. The glass ripples once and then goes still, acting like a good mirror should.

" _Derek,"_ comes a smooth voice from behind them. Corinne, basically just a skeleton in her white dress, is floating about a foot off the floor with a hammer clutched in her hands. It's the same one she'd offered him in the attic all those years ago, the same one he'd felt so tempted to grab.

"Oh shit," he gasps.

" _Great Grand-boy. Take it. You wanted it then and you want it now. If you don't take it, you'll want it forever. You'll never sleep without dreaming of it."_ The longing in Derek's chest swells and he feels he might burst with it, gazing at the hammer like it's made of pure gold. _"Take it. Help me. Help us. Help Echo House and help us build."_ His fingers twitch against his pants, a rasping of nails on fabric made soft with age.

"Don't do it," Stiles says, grasping his arm. "You can't leave me before we've even had our coffee date yet."

" _He has no choice. He's one of us_." Derek's gaze snaps up to Corinne's and she seems to realize her mistake a second too late. He snatches the hammer out of her grasp, holding it tight as he glares at her.

"Did you forget how stubborn your side of the family can be, Corinne," he asks coldly. "We always have a choice and I've just made mine. Here, you take it." He throws the hammer as hard as he can, the head of it burying itself into Corinne's chest and sending her flying down the dark hall between the stairs with a sound like breaking glass. "Let's get out of here before she comes back!"

"You don't have to tell me twice," Melissa says. Derek brings up the rear as they head out, none of them stopping until they reach the water fountain in the front yard. The doors have closed again at some point, sealing the place shut from all outsiders. Derek can't find the energy to complain about it, not when it means they're all finally safe.

"This place sucks," Liam says, breaking the tense quiet.

"That's right," Derek agrees. "This place sucks."

A rumbling sound is growing steadily louder, but Derek isn't concerned since he's outside. Still on the property, yes, but the van is only a few feet away and he's absolutely certain that he can use it to ram the gates if he has to.

"It's the stones again," Stiles says. Derek doesn't know what he means at first, but then a boulder is falling out of the sky and crashing through the front doors like God Himself is saying _fuck this place in particular_. More follow, crumbling mortar and stone like it's nothing, glass exploding out onto the lawn and glittering in the moonlight.

"Make him stop," Melissa implores, sounding close to tears.

"I can't."

"And I don't want him to," Derek adds with a grim set to his jaw. "Let him tear the place down. It's the first good thing to happen here since the house was made." As it turns out, watching giant stones crush parts of the house that has tried to kill you and everyone you love multiple times is a type of therapy Derek never even knew he needed in his life.

"Let's get out of here." Everyone climbs back into the van, no longer worrying about climbing over each other or that the AC only works half the time just that the stupid thing gets them out of range of the stones. The van jerks slightly as a ball of flames explodes upwards into the sky, one of the larger stones having smashed David's car.

They don't stop and they don't look back as they clear the gates.

Jennifer has only felt true regret five times in her life, but this is starting to be number six. She's finally got what she wants, real proof of the paranormal she can shove down skeptics' throats. She's got videos and tapes and photographs, all she has to do is make it outside with it all. She's got all her proof shoved into a briefcase when a crash thunders through the house, the grand chandelier in the entry hall crashing to the ground in a shower of sparks and crystal.

"Oh no," she gasps. Jennifer starts forward, but the doors of the billiards room slam shut in her face and a table moves to block them. "No! Derek, help me! Derek!" This is when the regret turns to horror, a sour taste exploding across her tongue.

Ghastly figures emerge from the woodwork, the decaying remains of all the people they've lost and a few more besides; David, Raeken, Marin, Erica, Jordan, Argent, Lydia, Deucalion. They circle around her, growing closer and closer despite the way Jennifer is swinging at them.

"Stay away from me! Stay away!"

" _You took my son,"_ David moans. _"He's gone."_

" _Say cheese,"_ Raeken says with a malicious grin.

" _Let me show you the garden,"_ Erica coos. _"There's lots to investigate there."_ The voices overlap, but Jennifer understands each one, her own psychic burden to bear.

" _You were right, Jennifer,"_ Argent says, manic glee coloring his words. _"I apologize. There is another world and it's quite wonderful."_

" _And the best part is,"_ Raeken starts.

" _You'll never have to leave,"_ Deucalion finishes, hunched over in his pajamas.

" _Jennifer,"_ Lydia says," _welcome home."_ Claustrophobia drives Jennifer to her knees as the spirits close the circle around her, bending over her with grabbing hands. She bats at them, screaming and fighting even as her world starts to grow transparent at the edges. In the end, as ghostly hands choke the life out of her, death feels like falling through a rabbit hole into Wonderland.

She's gone before the stones start to fall.

The full group doesn't meet up again for three months, gathering together in front of the house that had nearly torn them apart. It's broad daylight, the July heat not yet arrived as the weatherman had predicted, and a light breeze is ruffling Stiles' hair.

Derek passes out the roses he'd bought earlier, one for each person present that also represents all the people they've lost along the way and the imminent destruction of the family curse. He pauses in front of Stiles, fingers brushing against his as though the contact is the only thing keeping him sane.

"It's really over, isn't it," Stiles asks no one in particular.

"It really is," Melissa confirms, smiling. She's happy again, her smile genuine and not strained by fear. It's a nice sight that Stiles looks forward to growing used to. After this, they've all decided on having weekly breakfasts at a diner at a halfway point between all of their houses. Even Jackson's invited. "Liam, do you know what roses mean?"

"Roses mean remember," Liam says with a proud little smile.

"That's exactly right." Derek smiles as he draws Stiles close, one arm tight around his waist as they all stare up at the ruined house. Derek had called the groundskeeper and told him not to bother showing up once they'd gotten home that night. There's no point in him cleaning up shards of glass when it was just going to get torn down anyway.

"Thirty more minutes," Stiles says, tucking his hand into Derek's back pocket.

"The wrecking ball arrives promptly at seven," Derek says with a relieved smile. There's a sign bolted to what's left of the front wall, a beige thing that reads _Harris Condominiums: coming to this site in 2002. We build for the future._ Stiles doesn't give a damn what they build for so long as this house is dusted before noon.

Liam heads for the house and Melissa makes to follow, but Jackson stops her with a gentle hand on her arm.

"Don't worry, I got him," he says with a smile. He's changed since they left the house, became calmer and less unpleasant. It's something Stiles can get behind.

"Yeah, they're best buddies now that a house isn't trying to eat us," Derek quips. Jackson pays him no mind, kneeling next to Liam and watching as he sets his rose down on the dried leaves.

"Who's that one for?"

"Duke," Liam says, frowning. "I didn't save him and I should have." Jackson's frown echoes Liam's and he rests a hand against the little boy's back. Four months ago, Stiles would have made him eat that hand, but now he just smiles softly at the sight. Jackson wouldn't hurt Liam any more than he'd turn into a lizard.

The others join them, setting their flowers down with the stems criss-crossing over each other. Derek smiles down at Liam, tugging on a lock of his hair. It's starting to grow out now that they live by themselves, the ends curling. Their dad had bemoaned the sight, but he'd smiled and planted a kiss on Liam's cheek all the same.

"Can you still reach him with your mind," Melissa wonders.

"No," Derek says," but we communicate pretty well now. Don't we, Lee?" Liam grins and jumps up to hug Derek, giggling quietly as Derek spins on his heel. They get along so well together, especially now that John has given his approval. Stiles thinks he'll ask Derek to move in after supper.

They don't stay to watch the house get torn down, deciding the weekly breakfasts can start today. Likewise, Stiles doesn't wait to ask Derek to move in after supper, he does it as Derek takes a drink and has orange juice sprayed over his favorite Batman tee for his trouble.

Derek says yes, of course.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song featured throughout the story is called Dear Fellow Traveler by Sea Wolf.
> 
> Full chapter title quote: "Love is what moves the world, I've always thought ... it is the only thing which allows men and women to stand in a world where gravity always seems to want to pull them down ... bring them low ... and make them crawl"


End file.
